A Satisfying End For All Concerned
by KING FELIX
Summary: Hopefully, exactly what it says on the tin. LOST, but with the religious, political & social commentary of BSG. Behold the Locke /Smoke-Monster dichotomy as a fatalistic, Graham Greene-esque suicide-run, full of real-world anguish & sorrow. Enjoy!


A Satisfying End For All Concerned.

'The only thing to disappear completely on the day of the last judgement will be purgatory. And even then we won't lose much because purgatory is a recent invention'.

- Umberto Eco, 1998 interview with Stephen Jay Gould.

'You say it's going to happen now, but when exactly do you mean? See, I've already waited too long. And all my hope is gone'.

- The Smiths, 'How Soon Is Now?'

In a back garden somewhere, a pensioner was burning something noxious, throwing up a tall column of black smoke. Waxwings made revelatory reports to whoever would listen; the large, thorny rings hardly moved as the little birds leapt between them. On a bright summer day, the urban jungle behind the Enoch Card and Box Company never failed to present such picturesque sights; a sky of unnecessarily dense crows nests, monster-muscled vines, century-dilapidated walls which, to Locke, could only conjure thoughts of some god-hunting Tarkovsky film.

He was barely a hundred yards into his customary lunch-hour hike when the sunlight caused him to stop, cringe, grin, all the while with his head tilted back at a wholly awe-struck angle. He smiled giddily. Between the heavy branches above – a fuselage so long, attached to wings so swept-back, it was more like the over-stylised illustration of an airliner. Nothing at all from reality. Norman Rockwell? And they always make those unearthly, alt-sonorous noises when travelling at low altitudes. Keen Question Number One: he'd lived around airports his whole life, why had he never got used to it? Precarious little whines of thrust and pitch. But all of life is precarious, you know that.

"Trying to will that plane to crash?"

Juliet was smiling also, despite having been forced to jog for a long time to catch up. That easy smile, in such tangible sunlight; it was a hell of a thing. He laughed, winced, shook his head in wonder.

"How is it you always find me?", faux-plaintive.

She wagged the back of her head, as unselfconscious as you like. "Perhaps I have a magic compass".

In a slightly inadequate gesture, she held up the picnic box. They moved to the far edge of the woodland where there were seat-like tree roots atop pleasant packed mud. Locke mulled things over and inevitably grew wary, though he guarded against ever showing it.

"Two years", he reflected.

"Two years, one month, a handful of days", she corrected him.

"All I was thinking, it's rare for a couple to still give each other little treats like this, every other day. I'm weirdly lucky".

She struggled with the box, nonetheless found the dexterity to wrap herself around him, navigate the thick mounds of undergrowth, duck the swathes of mescaline sun.

"It's simple. We're the only two people alive who've ever truly loved each other".

At this, Locke smiled primly. He knew it was true, by virtue of the all-consuming heartache she'd felt as a child at the divorce of her parents - it gave her full authority to make such a sweeping statement. And he knew that she had a scholarly understanding of requited love. In the book exchanges of Year One, he'd gifted her HG Wells, Hemmingway, all those episodic Stephen King tomes - only to receive in turn the most searing romances. She gave him Aldous Huxley, 'Antic Hay'. Lots of Max Brand pulps, but only the ones which dealt with strangulated love affairs. Dr Kildare as he fell in love with a girl who just happened to need the most delicate operation of his career. There were Ulysses metaphors and melodramatic Korean aristocrats. Perhaps most stirring of all, the southern grifter who lost his new-found love in a bizarre mining accident. Locke read them all and was moved, though he couldn't quite say why. Happy endings are not the norm. These are such involved games we play with the devil, yet still we play.

They talked for a time about the greenery, memories wrought by the smell of the smoke. They talked about the nature of summer days, crazed sunlight on waxy leaves, a sense of perfect stillness. Juliet gave him an entirely selfless smile. Actually, entirely selfless or entirely self-knowing? He couldn't decide; he merely savoured it. In much the same way, she often spoke Latin, and he didn't understand, could only revel in the sound of it. No never a dead language.

From the ruc-sac, three mid-luxurious bottles of single malt were unveiled.

Juliet said, "I thought, one-and-a-half each, though we'll probably need to use some of it to start the camp fire".

Locke grimaced mightily, shifting to a smile in short order.

"Call it in", she proffered her cell. "Tell them something's come up and you can't make it back for the afternoon shift".

He slowly leant forward. Mr Thoughtful. Mr Eternally Decisive. "It barely worked the last time. I'm out of excuses now".

"It either works or it doesn't", she pointed out. "Say you were thrown out of a sheer glass window by a madman. Say you were knocked down by a car".

The bright sunshine –why deny it?- mesmerised everything. Locke: acutely aware of the high drama, the capacity to fall in with either rebellious ecstasy or sorrowful capitulation. Stare at the chlorophyll-choked creepers, make no disguise about your ugly way of eating the jerky sandwiches. "I'm less worried about me. I work in a box factory, never achieve anything, and it's every kind of hell. It's fine; I guess God must think I'm Job. But people need you. Your whole job is about creating new life!"

"Life's too short to worry about other people", she said.

He noted the way she leant forward, smile of default profundity, pupils dilated as per undersea Jacques Cousteau lagoons.

He stared angrily at the borders. "I believe that you love me. Do you realise how hard it is for me to say that?"

Juliet pouted. "If we love each other, there's really no other problems in the world. We're an island, you and I".

And Locke could only sidle his head. The radiation of the sun, perfectly serene, so at odds with every tormented thought.

"I just get the feeling we're in a world of irony, doing what we can to survive – when all fate wants to do is mock us, make us weak. The joke of the most famous fertility expert in the world, engaged to a man who is stone-cold impotent! Now tell me that irony doesn't bother you!"

Where there should have been shocked silence, he heard her voice. Not a split-second of silence, not even a human-scale beat. "It doesn't bother me. Because this is Juliet Burke and John Locke versus the gods".

At some point he'd risen to his feet. His hands were on his hips. His pale eyes assessed the foliage, for all the world a Jackson Pollock miasma on the face of the deep. All he could do was take a small step this way and a small step that way. Mr Thoughtful on another planet. He swept up a bottle of whisky. As horribly dry snakes, his absent-minded fingers caressed the neck. Of course, the tiniest decision would have seen him open it and wash it down his throat – something- just a quantum flicker of true purpose.

He set the whisky down on the picnic blanket, but nevertheless -as a small concession to free will- loosened his tie at a wild angle. The only option was to continue to stare at the foliage, since the unshielded sight of Juliet would surely have destroyed him.

"I have to get back to work".

They departed the beach via the funny little scrub at the north end. Jack absent-mindedly laid a palm across his shoulder-holster as, in front him, Boon, Kate, Sayid, Sun, Jin and Hurley marched purposefully on. Sawyer grudgingly brought up the rear. Between them all was Vincent, as happy as any dog has ever been, apparently unmindful that one of his communal masters was in peril.

"Tell me again what happened", asked Jack of Boon.

"We found a new station. God, did we find a new station. John, being John, went wild and headed straight into it. We passed through a dozen rooms, then a blast door came down and trapped him on the other side".

"Locke sure doesn't have much luck with blast doors", noted Hurley.

"What was the symbol at the centre of the octagon?", asked Sun pointedly.

Boon said, "John figured it was something from ancient Egypt. I don't remember. But this place was colossal, more like a subterranean nuclear plant".

"And you're sure there was no sign of life?", Jack checked this even as he had checked and double-checked it before.

Scant yards into the peripheral of the jungle and all sounds of the ocean came to an abrupt stop. The replacement: a slight murmur of sci-fi birdsong. Hurley was practically running in what looked like some mighty Maori war dance. Behind him, Kate moved quickly with her head down, very much nun-like, just like a nun, sharing at least part of her archetype with a nun, or acolyte, or cult member. Jack stared at her longingly. He mused on how, if they were all killed today, they'd still be survived by the Oceanics who'd stayed behind on the beach. He thought of Charlie and Claire, Phil and Judy Redcoat, Eliot and Lisa. Eliot and Lisa he had a soft spot for, as they seemed like younger versions of himself and Kate -Eliot with such a deep devotion to The Group. Most of all, he brooded on –was haunted by—the thought of Rose and Bernard. Everyone knew that they were blissfully happy, loved each other, could not be separated. Yet it was common knowledge that The Island hated romantic love; perhaps it saw it as a rival of its own messianic nature. Why did it allow them to live together, unless it knew that their love was actually doomed?

As they approached the region of the apocryphal 'new station', Sun and Jin started to fall back slightly. The increasingly large clearings reminded Jin of a documentary he'd once seen about the filming of war movies. On the miniature dioramas of Pacific battlefields, the set-designers would spray the grass and trees a lurid, practically neon shade of green. To the naked eye, it looked bizarre, but on film it seemed absolutely real. Explain.

"It's beautiful here", Sun stared at the trees. "It's strange how some days you notice and some days you don't".

"I am an ocean man. Do I keep you too far from the mountains?", he asked this respectfully.

"No. Although, to have a day out sometimes helps you to think. It helps to bring all your silly daydreams to life".

She grasped both of his arms and drew him close, smiled strangely. She seemed to enjoy the tactile buzz, the baiting of gravity. A sly grin coasted Jin's face. Then he frowned and raised his shield once more, that seamless armour of trepidation and respect.

"Behind you…"

Sun turned around slowly. The clearing of dry, yellowy grass was empty apart from some tall mounds of scrub – and behind the most prominent of these, some kind of industrial stillage. It was lop-sided, having come down by parachute. Jin saw that one of the flow-gates was ajar, spilling out tens of thousands of coin-sized octagons.

"Just like finding a treasure chest! This is like a pirate island, I suppose. Maybe we should take it to The Black Rock?"

Jin looked at his wife and briefly wondered why she was acting strangely. He examined one of the tiny octagons. Close up, they were nothing at all like coins, with tightly curved copper filaments in a coloured plastic case – clearly they had some utilitarian purpose, like auto-blades from a car engine. He scooped a handful into his tiny shirt pocket.

"Let's show these to Jack".

As hyped, the new station was like nothing they'd seen before. The sheer scale was apparent by the three transport buggies which lay inside the anteroom. Two almighty dark corridors stretched off to an unnerving vanishing point, both of them with a fine array of computerised ducts, elaborate cables, schizophrenic little access ports.

Sawyer, immediately, made a hissing noise. "That's the last thing we need on this island. A damn hadron collider".

"I don't think it's a hadron collider. In fact, guys? I'm not sure it's even a good idea for us to hang around here". Hurley pointed at the Dharma dedication plate, the symbol at the centre of the eight gates.

"Didn't anyone ever read Neil Gaiman's 'Sandman' comic? That's Death's symbol".

Sayid smiled faintly, and it was only with The Group's experience of his subtlety that they knew he wasn't condescending. "Respectful as I am of American comic books, that symbol is actually from Egypt circa 1500 BC. It denotes eternal life".

Kate, sardonic, "That old chestnut. No wonder Locke got so excited".

And Jack –

Jack found himself nodding as he struggled to formulate The Plan. He dimly heard phrases such as 'Death's symbol', 'eternal life'. He struggled to think clearly. Meanwhile, Sayid had back-tracked to the outside of the shaft. He traced his fingers over a smooth, beetle-coloured plate.

"Solar power. None of the other stations use solar power, and in exactly the same way they do not use DVD players, high-processor computers, mobile phones. Too modern. The Dharma Initiative did not use them, neither do The Others".

"Dude, are you saying this place could have been taken over by other… Others?"

Sayid looked to Jack, who marched over to a wall of futuristic torches.

"I'm not about to be impressed by these symbols, this technology – when all they want to do is reel us in like fish, make us rush from one end of The Island to the other for the rest of our lives. We go and get Locke, then we leave".

"Dude -"

Hurley held out his water bottle at a fearful distance. Within was a heavy liquid of the most beautiful amber. Malt whisky. "I'm pretty sure this was water when I filled it this morning".

Jack gaped. All faltering movements, he withdrew his own water bottle as Sawyer and Kate did likewise. Inside all of them – hello old friend. Water-into-whisky, and colourful miracle number 101.

Angry, afraid, Locke groped the movement rails of his wheelchair. What is the wheelchair-bound equivalent of pacing? It was late afternoon, alas getting dark already. The cars which sped past the San Hellier Station House caused glaring flashes on the broad windows. Sometimes they flashed forward, sometimes backwards. Sideways as they pulled into the motor pool. The overall effect heightened his tension to a frenzied degree. There was little choice but to whirl around and stare into the booth of milling officers, some with clipboards, some with coffee. The profound-looking Latino girl who he knew was in charge of his case conferred earnestly with her contemporaries. She nodded briskly, looked perilously determined. Just the same as everyone else.

"O.K, Mr Locke -"

She held open the door to a small lounge. Locke wheeled himself through, now more than ever proud of his lack of humility.

"Are we ready to go?", he asked impatiently. Impatience better than the embarrassment, in turn much better than the sorrow.

"Mr Locke, I don't think you're as concerned as you should be. And you should be damn concerned. Your girlfriend caused a man to fall unconscious. People get drunk, I know. That's fine. But not everyone assaults -"

"You don't know that any assault took place", he pointed out, every nerve in his body in a zen-like state of indignation.

Immediately after the police had called him, he'd been sure to get the whole story, knowing that later on they'd probably be more guarded. The facts, as corroborated by the other passengers –

Juliet had boarded the bus and calmly sat down, drunk, yes, but peaceful. She'd laid her head against the glass and smiled to herself. A few moments later, the ubiquitous feckless student had sat down opposite, started to play childish vocoder musak from the speakers of his phone, as students are wont. A nigh-retired business man asked him to turn it off.

'I'll do anything anybody asks me, as long as they say please', and this is a story about the End of the World.

The disturbed passengers turned to face the front again, resigned to the irritation. Except – a few moments later, something prompted the old business man to look round again. The student was unconscious. His phone was in the hands of Juliet. She stared at it ponderously, smiled, neatly dropped it out of the window. The moment was less satisfying than it should have been, however, as one of the passengers saw fit to tell the driver and have bus pulled over.

Locke had never been able to speak in a completely level tone, not least when he was passionate. Presently, he hardly even tried. "Ma'am, I apologise on behalf of my girlfriend. I've paid for the damage. Now, I'm ready to take her home".

"Unfortunately, Mr Locke, she's still under the influence, and I'm not sure she understands the seriousness of what she's done", said Officer Cortez.

Fury swelled inside Locke; he glared at the warm pastel walls, violently shook his head. "Officer, this isn't some raging mad woman. Enter her name into any search engine. Dr Juliet Burke. She's the foremost fertility expert on God's Earth. Now, what's caused her to do this? I can't tell you because – I don't know. But she should be respected. If she throws a rock into the sky and brings down the sun, she should be respected. Are we clear on that?"

Cortez busied herself at the front desk; the sound of Juliet's release papers mixed with the tortuous paperwork being done by other officers. Locke stared, angry and afraid, towards the broad corridor – presumably the direction of the cells. He'd collected Juliet's bag but was far too numb to look inside for clues. He ground his teeth; still his jaw still felt limp. He held a fist to his mouth.

Juliet emerged and reacted at once, a blissful look, womanly rather than girlish, alive with contemplation. She rushed to greet him - and, smoothly, he whirled his chair around. Coping with the exit was awkward, and slowed him down, though nothing slowed his rage. We're all of us trapped here, you know that.

8.15 gloaming brought little to the city, a grey infusion to the buildings and sidewalk, ineffectual cobalt to the sky. Locke thrust himself out into the ocean-like parking arena; there was an usual momentum in the wheelchair, a shame he was too hysterical to appreciate it. For a long time he thought of nothing and felt nothing. Then he heard Juliet weeping.

"John, I - "

"So – what was that?", he asked, enjoying the visceral movements of the wheelchair.

Juliet seemed to relax slightly. Stalwart streetlights, a serenade. They entered a long column of them and it was, at least, some kind of linear narrative. "They tell me I hurt someone, but I don't remember exactly".

"Drinking yourself to death? I'll say that's hurting someone".

She sobbed, stared at the sky. "I drank a little, because I missed you".

"This argument will achieve nothing", stated Locke. He wheeled faster and faster; alas the motion did nothing to bring reassuring words to his mouth. They passed along a sidewalk of two-by-four fences, surely a ridiculous cliché. Charlie Brown carrying his baseball gear from A to B. Linus' endless agonising over the inner life of Lucy.

"This day - one day we'll think about it, and we'll laugh".

"I'm sorry", said Locke, surprised at the strength in his voice. "I'm sorry that I've done this to you".

Juliet laughed, and with an odd sense of relief. "No one's done this to me. We love each other, it's the only explanation we'll ever need, and let everything else be a mystery. We'll always be together, it's fate, and all of this karma will be damned!"

It was then that Locke made the mistake of glancing at her. That most infectious of smiles. Reassuring, if only he wasn't Ulysses tied to the mast, Ulysses sunk to the bottom of the ocean and Penelope on a different planet.

Go ahead, shout. Let it all out. He shot his gaze to the sky as an airliner streaked through the gloaming, the vapour trail giving a perfect illusion of black smoke. "I don't believe in karma! It's lazy, and it's an insult to anyone who ever had a conscious thought! It suggests that we have to torture ourselves through a dozen lifetimes, when exactly the same outcome could be achieved by sitting across a table with God for five minutes!"

Juliet took a step towards him. "But what if there is no god? What if we're the gods? How will we ever get answers or decisions?"

Locke said bitterly, "Not like this. We're killing each other".

"Then let's die", said Juliet, quite soberly. She wiped her eyes.

Locke was careful to turn away from her as he spoke. "I never want to see you again".

A kind of blackness followed. He wheeled himself far and wide, and he knew that she wasn't following him. Down an alleyway, he moved faster and faster. The blackness persisted - when he closed his eyes and wept, there was little difference. A black void the width of the universe, sometimes with a stark white phosphoresce gliding upwards like an elevator. It was horrible, but it allowed him to focus his thoughts. He still had her bag and realised there was nothing to do but half-heartedly fish his hands inside. There was a slip of paper, and he prayed it wasn't a love letter from her.

It wasn't. Hail the No-god. It was simply some kind of store flyer. Reading, '_Retro-head? We allow you to make your very own compilation and record it directly onto a 45" vinyl LP! A perfect gift for you or the one you love! Get back to the seventies where you belong!"_

Locke gazed into the distance in horror. His fatally-shocked hands probed inside the bag and sure enough found a 45" record. He angled it towards his eyes, though there were several long moments before he could comprehend what he was seeing. In way – naturally – just like an inversion of Graham Greene and 'Brighton Rock'.

The sleeve of the record had an eight-sided shape, white-on-black, with horribly poignant italic letters inset. '_To John. Songs which it's impossible to feel sad while listening to. Love, of course, Juliet'_.

He read the message an unwarranted number of times, as an ill-disciplined author re-reads the start of his novel again and again, the conceited ending waiting forever in the wings.

He lolled his head and stared at the puddles, wondering what exactly would become of him in hell.

Sayid crept forward. Boon moved hesitantly behind him, sans gun. It now pervaded everything, that eerie electrical drone, evidently belonging to an usually large and powerful machine. Their ears had become so attuned that it came as a shock when a new rhythm entered the scene. Sayid halted and had to work hard to keep his gun at the ready.

"A piano?", Boon asked.

"A jazz piano", noted Sayid, impressed.

They moved forward apace. Sometimes the tunnel was inclined. Sometimes, though tightly curved, it seemed to have no utilitarian purpose. Vibrant pot-plants lay at junctions – unusual. Whenever they came to a fork or the possibility of entering some devilishly inviting chamber – they resisted. They followed the sound of the jazz piano.

"Don't you think this is too easy?", asked Boon aloofly.

"You know, every now and again, you remind me of Shannon", and he said this not-at-all-wistfully. He smiled. "No, I do not think this is too easy, and it would not concern me if it was. Are you ready?"

Now the remaining space was almost nothing. Boon jerked his body tight as Sayid slid around the corner. In a homely little room, a thirty-something man played a grand piano with the vaguely ostentatious gestures of a nightclub impresario. Atop the piano – a huge pile of coins, a gun.

Sayid the hypnotist, soothing, a friend to all mankind, "Do not move. Put your hands in the air".

The man –Boon could see now that he was bestubbled with a deeply sardonic face—was hardly affected.

"O.K. 'Man shot dead while playing the piano and posted on Youtube' ".

"I won't hurt you, I merely want to avoid _you_ hurting _us"._

The piano-man sighed, "Look, friend -".

A new, attractive, female voice gained dominance. "_FBI_! Drop your gun, now!"

Boon found it intriguing that Sayid should know so clearly when he was beat. It was immutable, like the result of an equation. The gun slipped from his hand; the attractive woman kicked it to unattainability.

"Peter, cuff them".

The equation went a stage further, though. Between Peter and the captured Oceanics, there sauntered –

"People please, this is all getting a little Reservoir Dogs". Sawyer presented himself with a swagger and outstretched palms. Being Sawyer, his disarming grin was highly directional; he focused it on the woman, to the exclusion of all others. "Lower your weapon, Agent Scully. We're all friends here. And believe me, if I can be friends with the Shaq from Iraq over there, I can be friends with anyone".

"Sir, I need you to step back". The woman's gun was unwavering, the look of ferocity in her eyes – something to behold.

Sawyer, "I like the 'Sir', but I got some real bad news for you. The FBI has no more jurisdiction here than you can fly to the Emerald City and arrest the Wizard of Oz. You see, this is not your island. This is our island".

He approached her, always grinning. A Grin versus God's Dutiful Heroine.

"I'm telling you, miss. You can't shoot me. This is my last shirt and I'll be damned if I gotta walk around in a Dharma boiler suit".

"Sir-"

The dichotomy of fear and determination in her eyes flared beautifully as she pulled the trigger. Boon felt a curious cold sweat which erupted and receded in the space of a second.

Misfire.

"Of course", Peter puffed his cheeks. "I keep forgetting this is Misfire Island".

Hurley felt self-absorbed, even as they passed such tantalising rooms. Some were painted orange, some had grandfather clocks, oversized atomic models, eight-sided computer consoles which looked more like giant mushrooms. The four of them hung back as Jack took the fore, exhaustion, alertness, numerous other contradictions playing neatly on his face. He wondered long and hard why his friend was so afraid, and after a time asked Kate what she thought.

Incredulity. "How could he _not_ be afraid?"

"Because… ", Hurley screwed up his brow, struggled to express himself, "it's exciting?"

" 'Exciting'? ", Sun smiled but was shocked.

"Dude, come on. Everything we do is exciting. We go into pirate galleons marooned a mile from shore, collect dynamite, we fight polar bears, head into these secret bunkers designed by… I dunno… Arthur C Clarke. All of that, and we know The Island is doing it only to teach us about ourselves?"

Kate regarded him keenly, felt a little like crying. It was a testament to all that was good about Hurley that he could still think this way, even after the shooting of Libby.

The electrical hum receded slightly, a sign that they'd taken at least a few turns in the opposite direction. Yet there was still a sense that they were deep underground, with feet-thick walls, ancient rooms which hoarded the thin air-pressure in the style of a pathology lab or burial crypt. An intuition caused Jack to creep slowly and hug the wall; he breathed sharply and straightened his torso. Something in the shadows of a nearby alcove suggested a more expansive chamber. He steeled himself and ducked within. Kate made to follow, at the last minute seeing an industrial light switch and hitting it with her palm.

"Gaaa!", Jack fell backwards and flailed in horror. Vincent ran through into the chamber, only to stop, assume a quizzical stance, bark – at a thirty foot high stone head; a dizzying number of teeth set into the eeriest smile anyone had ever seen. The thing was vast, propped up in a mound of stone debris, possibly segments from the lower portion of this colossal statue -something which must have stood hundreds of feet tall. A hideously-anthropomorphised hippopotamus, endlessly malevolent, or maybe endlessly protective. Given a hundred years to try and understand, what could it possibly mean?

Jin winced and gaped. He regarded the Egyptian-style head dress and the braided hair; for a time this was satisfaction enough. Then he saw the deeper implications. The ceiling tapered neatly around the tip of the head and the funny little ears (actually the size of a man) – the whole facility could only have been built around it.

Kate tried to comfort Jack, who had straightened himself, wiped the cold sweat from his brow, but could not quite take his eyes from the ruinous statue. He hastily levelled his gun as a man entered from the opposite end of the huge chamber. He was old, with a crisp lab coat, lumberjack shirt, teddy-boy haircut. Intriguingly, he saw the gun and was unphased.

His voice: commanding as only a scientist's can be. "No need to be alarmed. Taweret, the ancient Egyptian Goddess of Fertility. At the moment she's benign towards us, I assure you".

Kate prepared her array of questions, but before she could fire off a single one, the scientist saw Vincent and was overcome by emotion. He fell to his knees and called to the dog. Vincent, who was a good dog, wagged his tail and ran into his arms.

"Oh, Laika! My Laika, how I've missed you! They said that you had gone forever, but I knew you'd come back! Oh, my boy, my beautiful boy!"

The Oceanics looked at each other. The joy was infectious and Jin was the first one to smile, thinking, 'Dogs are loyal. Not loyal to any one person, but to loyalty and love as a concept'. Of course, no one had the heart to tell the old man this was not the mythical 'Laika'.

He tapped his thigh for Vincent to follow him back through the far chamber door. "I have some beef jerky, Laika, just for you, because you're my good dog!"

"Hey!", called Jack.

Kate squeezed his arm lovingly. "Let's just follow him".

The chamber gave way to successive rooms, hardly living quarters, though the concrete had been adorned with pleasant ethnic throws, pot-plants, a few framed photographs no doubt of people from the mainland, ghosts. Jack did not bother to level his gun. His eyes; hardly crazed at all. They walked and walked; the place spoke of some respectable urbanites making the best of Franz Kafka. Occasionally a Bond-villain's mountain lair but with pathos-ridden charm. Hurley walked quickly. He felt his heart beat strangely, very expectantly.

In a central chamber, yes, very much the nesting space of a badger set – there stood Sawyer, Boon, Sayid, a sardonic-looking man and, bizarrely, a woman in an FBI field jacket.

Said Sawyer, "Cool it, Doc. We've already had the gun-touting episode".

"Who are you people?", demanded Jack.

Peter scowled. "Please don't say, 'It's a long story', or I may want to be shot after all".

The FBI officer smiled apologetically to all concerned. "It _is_ a long story".

Sayid, softly, spoke the names of his friends, then, "Out of New York City, this is Peter Bishop, Dr Walter Bishop, FBI Agent Olivia Dunham".

Walter, the old scientist, clapped his hands eagerly and reflected on what he'd heard. "Jack Shepherd! Jeff Skilling! James Stewart! Josef Stalin!"

Peter shrugged. "Yeah. He's been doing the initials thing a lot recently. We don't know why".

And Walter rushed to shake Jack's hand, beaming, probing his eyes with absolute joy. "Dr Shepherd, it is a pleasure to meet you at last. I must confess, you're not at all how I imagined you from The Equation. Tell me, did you ever manage to locate your father's corpse?"

Olivia smiled just as reassuringly as she could and laid a hand on the scientist's shoulder. "Walter, why not let me explain what's going on here?"

Initially, there were only three chairs in the chamber. Peter and Hurley went to successive rooms to collect more, but there still wasn't enough. Of course, because they were young and hardcore, Boon and Kate were proud enough to sit on the floor. Sawyer lounged with his back against the wall as Olivia leant beside him. Periodically a fine, assessing smile slipped through. He found she smelt like a newly-opened box of celebration sweets and thought, 'Naturally'.

Walter offered to make them all some Hot Bovril, or coffee if they'd prefer. Jack said no, and out of solidarity the rest of the Oceanics refused as well. Sawyer swirled around his bottle of water-into-whisky but did not drink.

"Well!", breathed Sayid. "An explanation! It has been a long time coming. I cannot help wondering, on how many levels will it be satisfying?"

"Oh, it will be quite satisfying", promised Walter, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Jack scowled and moved his head dizzily. "You know what? We've all been here before. There is no explanation to any of this".

Walter looked confused. "But Jack, of course there is. It's The End".

"Where is Locke?"

"Your friend is in the chamber of The Final Great Machine", said Walter triumphantly. "He is with none other than Mr Neil Armstrong, and I ask you, is there a more trustworthy pair of hands in the world?"

Where, once upon a time, he would have openly laughed, Jack could only smile incredulously. At least, thought Kate, it was heart-felt. "Neil Armstrong – as in, the first man on the moon?"

From his piano stool, Peter waved his palms. "You'll have to excuse my father. Your friend Locke is indeed trapped in a chamber – we saw him on the CCTV before it failed, with a man who looked –a little—like Neil Armstrong. Who this could really be – I don't know".

Jack said bitterly, "I thought you were full of answers?"

Olivia, "Where would you like to start?"

And it came to pass. Those that were numbered among the tribe of Jack Shepherd shall look to each other's eyes and wonder.

"_What is The Island_?"

"Everything on The Island", said Olivia excitedly, "everything it can do, everything it represents, can be traced back to a single name: Massive Dynamic".

Ah, the empire of Massive Dynamic. In a way it made sense to Jack. He remembered the legal wranglings which used to be fought in the broadsheets, across all the rolling news networks, as that single corporation had slowly risen to be more powerful than any government. The little man had feared it, and apparently with good reason.

"Massive Dynamic is the Dharma Initiative?"

Olivia cringed regretfully, delicately, "Not exactly. The history runs like this: Massive was set up by William Bell, incidentally a former a lab partner of Walter here. But few people realise that, in spite of his considerable public profile, Dr Bell was far from being the real power behind Massive Dynamic. The real man in charge was one Charles Whitmore.

"My division has spent years investigating the secret, core projects of Massive Dynamic. As early as two decades ago, they'd mastered teleportation, psychic warfare, astral projection, even a rudimentary form of immortality. Travelling between parallel universes? To them it was as easy as taking a bus".

Jack stared at her dryly. He longed to say that these things were impossible. His soul cried out that they should be impossible. But he steeled himself. They might not be impossible, but they would always be ridiculous and impractical, and no one would ever persuade him otherwise.

"All of it pales next to the main project, however. Call it a supercomputer, or-", no sooner had Olivia resumed than she faltered horribly.

Walter, excitedly, picked up the thread. "Call it a supercomputer, or a form lateral meditation. Long ago, Billy and I had theorised that the method by which a quantum supercomputer would process its data would be no different than subjecting the theta-mu brain waves of the average human with pulses of planck-coherent quarks. Unfortunately, our research into the matter was somewhat usurped by a large group of scientists called Daniel Faraday".

Peter flicked his face into a sardonic frown. "And before you say, 'Daniel Faraday? That's an odd collective name for a group of scientists' –don't. This was the same man taken from – _hundreds_ of parallel universes. He arranged to have the quantum computer routed through the minds of all his parallel selves. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, the stream of quantum information broke down – the Daniel Faradays all had elaborate nervous breakdowns as they realised that the existence of their beloved Charlotte could not be guaranteed on an existential, non-solipsist level".

Walter, suddenly, was disgusted. "Son, how many times have I warned you about mixing traditional dialactical philosophy with neocorporeal quantum-machinations? The link is tenuous, at best".

One person in the room, at least, was amused. Sayid leant back in his chair, gripping the arms, awed by nothing. "When I was first recruited into the Republican Guard, my computer training consisted entirely of hitting Control and Run, to reveal a long list of people about to be executed. Tell me, what is a quantum supercomputer even designed to do?"

Walter was surprised. "Why, it was set up to answer the most important question of all. Is there a god?"

"I think", said Sayid, "Professor Richard Dawkins would have thing or two to say about that".

Walter growled, "Richard Dawkins is a small man with small ideas".

Hurley steadily leant forward. "Dude, I'm kind of, like, afraid to ask, but-"

"Son!", Walter continued to be angry, "I really must insist that you stop littering your sentences with meaningless colloquialisms such as 'Dude' and 'like'. It detracts from the gravitas of anything you might have to say!"

Jack spoke up with uncharacteristic repose, "I think what Hurley was about ask, what does any of this have to do with us?"

Walter breathed deeply. He stared at his knees regretfully. Olivia, also, craned forward and palmed at her thighs in thoughtful silence; it was an absent-minded movement which Sawyer found comforting. "After the failure of the Daniel Faraday process, Whitmore decided that it would be best to use a group of normal individuals to carry the quantum encoding. A single group of non-scientific people from a single, communal universe. To that end, he set about finding a means of acquiring a cross-section of unknowing test-subjects.

"If the project went wrong, there would have to be no legal recourse. It would have to be a group of people who could legitimately be seen to vanish from the face of the earth.

"As in a plane crash".

The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. A spidery white phosphorescence, gliding ever upwards like an elevator. He saw it whenever he slept, and most of the times he closed his eyes.

Days passed in the Ankh Station. He sometimes tried to fall in with the scientists, for a time, as they explained to the Oceanics the nature of the 'Three Great Machines'. But Sawyer had never cared for science. He failed to connect, and by turns grew to hate the gobbledegook He understood the following, however: the First Great Machine subtly altered their brainwaves, though not to any degree they'd notice, even on a subconscious level. The Second Great Machine, when it was activated, would create a highly focused black hole, or more specifically, an 'event horizon'.

All three machines must be running together to produce the required result. The required result? No less than to bring God to Earth, or transpose Earth into Heaven, depending on which mythology you subscribed to. Problem: the Third Great Machine was located behind sealed, bomb-proof doors near the centre of the Ankh Station – no one had ever seen it, the scientists could only speculate about what it might be. The old one, Walter, suggested 'something to do with neutrinos', though he sounded far from certain. All they knew for sure was that the door had briefly opened to admit one John Locke before closing again. 'Locke the messiah!', thought Sawyer. But you could maybe do worse.

He was bored and listless. Plenty of the other Oceanics worked on the First Great Machine, which to Sawyer seemed like no more than a minimum wage production line writ large. Tens of thousands of octagon-shaped fuses must be fitted onto a futuristic power grid. It was the most repetitive manual work, though it also put him in mind of that famous quotation, 'Communism only failed because it goes against human nature'. He sneered inwardly. What's so good about human nature? Human nature is the ultimate con –a). b).—What's the opposite of human nature anyway? The nature of God? If that's so, it ain't communism anyway.

In any case, Sun and Jin enjoyed working on it, and he was happy for them. Kate liked it, too; she said it reminded her of a Saturday job she'd had as a teenager, in fact the last time she'd truly been happy. The Doc? Naturally, he wanted guarantees that the Three Great Machines would not cause any death or destruction. Your Man Walter told him certainly not. But Sawyer had detected that slight rise in his shoulders as clear as day. The Three Great Machines could cause all the death and destruction you like.

He wondered aimlessly around the Ankh Station. Vast - vastly boring. He had a strong desire to make a move on Olivia, before remembering how The Island did all it could to smite romantic love. Still? Maybe I'm on a roll, on a roll, this time. Surely this scheme to conjure God-on-High was in the will of The Island? Perhaps, then, it would now turn a blind eye to their petty human affairs?

It wasn't as if she wasn't the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen.

He stood and glared at the expansive bookcase in the chamber which had been annexed as a living room. Every time he was about to make a choice he grew more and more frustrated. His hand hovered over the ubiquitous 1973 copy of National Geographic.

"I should apologise. These books are all kind of dull".

Surely executing some flashy FBI field-training, she'd silently manoeuvred behind him. Sawyer – grinned.

"Lucky I can read _anything_ with this gaping bullet-hole in my head".

Olivia rocked around on her heels and smiled sheepishly. "I knew the gun would misfire. They all do within five hundred yards of the Third Great Machine".

There were few things Sawyer enjoyed more than balking - he smiled broadly. " 'Third Great Machine'. How can you say that without laughing?"

"It does-", Olivia smiled, "take some practice".

She blinked and pretended to grow deeply serious. Perhaps, he thought, she knows that her pupils are dilated.

"Are you a big reader, Mr Sawyer?"

Of course, Sawyer did not grow serious in turn. "I am at that, miss. And please, you have my leave to call me 'James'".

"As I said", she breathed, "these books are all fairly uninteresting, I can't apologise enough".

Sawyer pretended to examine the aged spines closely. He spoke as if defending the respective authors before descending, joyously, into sarcasm, "Come on, now! Agatha Christie? Danielle Steel? You even hate _Harry Potter_?"

Olivia laughed deeply, squinted, all quite genuine. She recovered herself and then laughed again.

"Since coming to The Island, I don't know – sometimes I feel like I never want to read another book again. Then at other times, I suddenly get this burning desire to read, I don't know, Papillion back-to-back. Of Mice and Men, Journey to Centre of the Earth, some doorstop biography of Abe Lincoln".

Sawyer said, "Let me guess, you feel like reading one of those whenever Ren and Stimpy start arguing about quantum theory?"

A bleak smile, "It does get lonely!"

He nodded and carefully examined the book case for the hundredth time. "Come on! There must be something here!"

"Not really", said Olivia. "Not when I've taken all the best books to my bedroom".

Gambit pay-off and hustle completed. He narrowed his eyes. "Well, Agent Dunham, maybe I should come and take a look?"

Olivia blushed.

The largest chamber in the Ankh Station, as far as anyone could tell, was the one which held the head of Taweret. But at a close second there was the area which housed the Second Great Machine. Jack despised it; it was so much like a dark movie set with nebulous corners, nebulous lighting, nebulous colours. The machine itself could have been no more than a thirty foot washing machine, and so was only partially awe-inspiring. He stared into the black alcove where one day soon, they told him, a messianic black hole would manifest. And all he saw was darkness. He swigged at his whisky; it tasted good. He took haphazard gulps and mused on his automatically-concealed tears.

"Hi", said Peter.

"Mr Bishop. Please—why don't you take a seat and lecture me about The Coming of God?"

"Don't believe in him". Peter relaxed himself along the gantry railing. "I get the impression you don't, either. You know, it's fine to be that way".

Jack turned away from The Second Great Machine and sat peacefully on the deck. There was, after all, no point in fighting.

"What kind of man is he, this Locke? Does he believe in god?"

Jack gave a very small laugh. When drunk men give such small laughs, thought Peter, all is not well with world.

"I never asked him. He was crazy enough to. He certainly believed in –things".

"He would have liked Walter", reflected Peter, and they both grinned in spite of themselves.

Peter ran an alienesque coin along his knuckles. Jack reflected how such dexterity would have made for an excellent surgeon.

"I gotta tell you, Jack, I'm getting pretty nervous about this thing".

"Summoning God? What could go wrong? What do want me to tell you, Peter? That there's nothing to be afraid of? I sat in my chair. I blinked open my eyes, saw the front section of my plane falling away to hell, and wasn't scared. I fell towards the beach at a thousand miles an hour, and I wasn't scared. Once I was down, there were a dozen people bleeding to death, who I had to save. No fear! I saw a man plucked from his feet into a reversing engine. I felt no fear.

"But there had to be some punishment coming. Yes there did. The first moment I saw her and-"

He choked, and his lip quivered. Peter felt horrified.

"You mean Kate?"

Jack stood tall and took no small satisfaction in throwing the whisky bottle into the heart of the black hole emitter.

"From the moment I saw her - We found a clearing, and she sewed up a wound on my back. I remember staring at this wood-wormed log, feeling as though – I was on a different planet. I wanted to take her, build a castle of the wreckage, never leave. But there had to be some punishment coming. This girl who was –my life, given back to me—and she was a convict, a murderess. You understand? Even then, day one, your friend God- it was determined to keep her incapable of loving me, or anyone, ever! This place is cursed, and why would God choose hell as his front door?"

Reigning himself back from the emotion, Peter gave a few more sweeps of his knuckles before flipping the coin high into the air and catching it on his wrist.

"Here's the thing about women, Jack. You need to have eyes in the back of your head. Now, there's no way you'll ever be able to see this for yourself, but sometimes, when your back's to her, she'll look at you - and melt. And believe me, I've been so jealous I've wanted to walk into the sea and keep walking.

"And the thing they don't tell you, your friends, the TV, is that all of _that_ -", he nodded to the whisky bottle and all it might represent. "—is perfectly justified. Don't let anybody ever tell you it isn't. Because when I wasn't too jaded to think about these things, when other people still weren't jaded enough –I knew; True Love is The End of the World. How could it not be? In your soul, you're as defined as you'll ever be. Like a character in a book. I know, for there to be a happy ending now would be the weirdest coincidence, but then again– here, on The Island? That comic book about the polar bear – everything else-

"Either way, you need to go to her, Jack, because this could be your last chance of the hour".

Jack stared at his new friend. It was by no means certain that eventually he'd ever blink and smile. But he did.

"Now", said Peter coolly. "As you'll know by now, any water which you bring in here will automatically turn to whisky. Which means, unfortunately-"

He fished in the pocket of his suit-with-no-shirt, produced a small jar of coffee.

"—you're going to have to eat this raw".

Lately, everyone believed that the First Great Machine was so beautiful it couldn't possibly have any utilitarian purpose. Behold the most un-gaudy fairground ride in the world, a cylindrical chamber bejewelled by the tens of thousands of octagonal fuses, most of which had been carefully fitted in the last few days by the Oceanics.

Presently they stood back and marvelled. Before, The Island had never been one for modern art, with its conservative scheme of dusty bunker and plane wreckage chic. Now? Come and worship at the Church of the God's Working Kaleidoscope.

Even Sawyer was dazzled. "Just like 'The Doors of Perception', I guess".

Olivia looked at him with sharp surprise. He defended himself, "What, you think I skimmed it just 'cos it's named after my favourite rock group?"

All eyes twinkled with subtle hope, and what do you think about that? Still it was only Kate's anxiety which breached that certain magickal threshold. She stood tensely and waited for Jack. The hum, which was now broad and almighty, she ignored. Yes, it might be nice to just stand and stare at the colours, brood about her mother, the explosion, the chase. But this was a new world.

When Dr Shepherd eventually arrived, he was all but unmoved by the mosaic of colours. He looked only at Kate. He stared intensely, for such a long period. So much coldness in the atmosphere, produced by the abundance of glass, made his shoulders feel cool, almost saintly. Kate had never been more beautiful. A blush. 'Freckles'. As he thought about his life as it had been, he found he wanted nothing more than to forget how to fire a gun, build a camp fire, purify ocean water. Gone: how to perform a ventral laparotomy, make a ethmoidal incision, how to read an x-ray or have a bedside manner. The fact that his father had been such an unknowable legend in the ranks of chief surgeons? Of the increasingly complex Dr Christian Shepherd, he was proud, and that's all.

He stood within three feet of her - Dharma coffee versus Holy Whisky: was it some perpetual chemical reaction which would power bliss, forever? He knew his eyes must be hideously swollen, but that just seemed to make her smile and swoon, grow ever more girlish. He felt weak; it was pleasant.

She handed him the final fuse and childishly, with much too much force in her thumb, indicated the waiting aperture. He affixed it, and then they disregarded everything, were happy. No thoughts, either, about The Island or the indeterminate time they'd spent on it. Of the conflicts which he and Kate had recently, all the emotional conspiracies which had driven them apart –yes, he supposed they did still matter, but only in a silly way. Terrorists and venerable priests alike believing that their gods must be understood by whole other countries, when in truth you're lucky if a single other person anywhere shares your conceptions. Political correctness. People protected by their ethnicity, and would they prefer to be hated for their individual personalities? The Others had hated the Oceanics because The Island told them to. And how they warred with us, stealing our children, shooting flaming arrows, unleashing _Ethan_. Why not just admit; all men are islands. Aspire to live alone then die together, as it's obviously just the zeitgeist spirit which matters.

He beheld Kate's eyes. Really there was only one set of eyes at work on The Island. For a long time he believed it was the eyes of Benjamin Linus. Those sleighting reptilian orbs synonymous with the love of convoluted mystery. He came to forget them as he forgot everything now – except Kate. Her eyes were a kind of reactor, he decided. They were daunted and reassured from second-to-second; something to do with the base components of post-human consciousness.

To a lesser degree, The First Great Machine glowed magnificently.

"Kate…"

"Jack-"

"Kate, I -"

"Jack!"

He followed her gaze to the inner-chamber door where the blue light of a clear summer day held fast. What kind of black hole produced daylight? Within the frame was Walter, in full projecting-voice mode.

"The Second Great Machine, also, is active. My friends, I have a feeling that these are truly the Last Days. Get excited. Adorn your finest woollen socks!"

Jack turned to look back at his love. But between Walter and Kate, something caught his eye: first one, then another. Then every Dharma symbol, for as far as the eye could see, had changed as the power surged through them. On the ubiquitous Dharma logo, from time immemorial, only one of the eight gates was ever open. And now, bingo. Game over. Free, symmetrical movement was granted from whatever corner of the maze you were trapped in.

Several of the Oceanics ran from the Chamber of the First Great Machine, into the almighty light, to the Second and then the Third.

Wielding a chair, wrestler-style, Hurley thought nothing of pounding repeatedly against the sheer surface. Hardly any reverb came; being a passive man by nature, his physical effort was far too gentle. Only the man's consternation, thought Sayid, is something to behold.

"John! Turn on the machine, man! We'll get to meet God!"

Sayid found himself relaxing eerily. Words of comfort, which he hadn't thought of since childhood, soon entered his mind. 'Say: Is there of your partners one that leadeth to the Truth? Is he who leadeth to the Truth more deserving that He should be followed, or he who findeth not the way unless he (himself) be guided. What aileth you? Allah is aware of what they do'.

"Hurley", Sayid lay a hand on his friend's shoulder. "It is too thick, he cannot hear you. But if he is still in there, alive, he will find a way to activate the machine. John Locke is one of the most spiritual men I ever met, and this is obviously his moment".

The archetypal dingy hotel, where one surely goes to die, was wildly inviting to him. The outside seemed gloss back. The inside seemed gloss black. There was even a cheap and tacky neon sign outside of his window, reference every stereotype downtown ever seen on TV or in movies. He didn't get angry at the cliché, hardly got angry as Mr Alpert, the manager, together with a bug-eyed bellboy, manhandled the John-Locke-and-wheelchair-unit up the narrow staircase. Because this thing in the shape of a man and a wheelchair is a whole black universe, and it's contracting, delineating, all to worship the blunt end of entropy. He tipped the humans thirty dollars apiece, which he immediately regretted as they'd surely suspect he'd come to commit suicide and contrive ways to stop him. Zeal is bad for business, say the humans.

But to my business. He remembered reading 'The Unnameable' by Samuel Beckett and having his head spin. Written entirely as an internal dialogue as it confronted the absolute exhaustion of all human determination –it was so beautifully energised and thoughtful, even in the face of death. A not-quite-abstract exegesis on century after century of madness and weird persecution. In a way, Locke accepted it all with pleasure. Humans can't handle eternity. That's OK. The only thing that troubled him: there should be some satisfaction in it. Just a little flourish, somewhere. Instead – it has _always_ been the end of time. Existence itself is a kind of gnostic schizophrenia.

He longingly stared at the wire of the ceiling light; hanging would be far preferable, only the wheelchair made this too impractical. So he unwrapped his Jericho .45 and kept it level on the armrest..

As a rule, he ignored the contents of the room, all except for a broad mirror set into the wardrobe. Therein was a horribly thoughtful face. To see his eyes, the way they so seamlessly evoked the inhuman ideas of his squirming soul –it made him shiver. Such intimacy is not meant for humans. He'd felt god-privileged whenever he'd stared into Juliet's eyes, and for a time was convinced they might save him. But sometimes people just seem to smile as they're drowning. It was probably the same with Ophelia and Hamlet.

He frowned and fondled the handle of the Jericho. All of these carefully polarised horrors like the points in a pentagram. They'd conspired against him since the beginning of time. The insult of his life as the last blue-collar in the country, all the waves of disrespect it had brought him. The arrogance of almost everyone else with their flat refusal to do anything except high-managerial, non-utilitarian desk jobs. And, 'Let's have kids, darling. Yes, I did say 'kids' plural, in case there's one of them we don't quite love enough'. 'As long as we've got John Locke as our chief slave. Damn, his legs have atrophied, we won't be able to use them as Soylent Green anymore'. The thoughtless arrogance. Laziness. Lack of humility. The glorification of war, and any kind of government making it their business to point out, 'These terrorists are a small group of fundamentalists who've subverted the peaceful nature of their religion'. And? Since it's your business to know these things, go ahead and explain about the connection between faith and The Id. Don't say indoctrination, because it's too easy. Don't say indoctrination because I am just one man. I am John Locke. I am John Locke. Explain.

He held the gun to his head with a complete lack of fear or hesitation. He felt no reaction in his heart-rate, either. His facial features remained steady except for a slight quiver of excitement, because, after all, John Locke is a passionate man.

A knock sounded at the door. This, because the universe knew he was naturally curious, and it could probably draw his suicide out indefinitely if it wanted to. He applied a tangible amount of pressure to the trigger and closed his eyes. Then – three very slow knocks drew his attention, because they sounded so much like a secret signal. Three measured raps; the mind boggled. He withdrew the gun and stared at it curiously. Outside it's sunny. Outside it's the middle of the night.

On answering the door, Locke found a blonde, extremely ponderous-looking man. Notwithstanding the meaningful eye-contact, he was convinced this was some suicide-negotiator sent up by the police or the hotel management.

He stared acidly at the man and thought, 'You have no idea how much I want to kill you'.

The man smiled to reveal an orange peel, which he'd inserted between his teeth and lips to comical halloween effect.

"What do you want?", asked Locke.

"I have to check your radiator is working", said the man.

"I'm not cold", stated Locke.

Warned the stranger, "It might be a cold night".

Locke wheeled himself out of the way and the man coolly walked in.

"Who are you?"

"Jacob".

"What do you want?"

"I'm here to check your radiator, plain and simple. As Freud said, 'sometimes a tree is just a tree'. Although I get the impression you're more of a Jung man".

Locke angrily jabbed his finger. "You and I will never have a rapport, and especially not to the point where you can dissuade me from doing what I have to do".

"And what would that be?", Jacob half-smiled. He half-smiled as if wincing away the sun on some mighty ocean horizon.

Locke carefully examined him. The suit trousers were smart enough, but the man's top he couldn't identify at all. It could equally have been the tunic of some ancient Greek, or the undergarment of a sixties astronaut. And that damned optimistic smile.

"I want – oblivion", said Locke.

"Suicide?", pondered Jacob. "Do people really commit suicide? I've never known anyone do it. They say Hunter S Thompson shot himself in the head, but I have trouble believing that".

Locke was genuinely unnerved. Funny, he thought, that I can still be surprised.

"Hunter S Thompson is dead? When did this happen?"

Jacob stared into his eyes for a long time, and with an expression that was much darker than usual. In the end, he decided to say, "Just recently".

For the heart of a downtown nightmare, the hotel was near-silent, with only the occasional rumble of ambient noise. It was excellent for feeling braced, however. Locke spread his arms and spoke in what he hoped was an expression of ugly candour. "Well, why would I care about other people anyway?"

Jacob, "It's interesting, that's all. I can understand the pressures of life building until you can't stand them with your conscious mind. Probably you can't stand them in your dreams, either. But what about the hypnogogic miasma of mu-state sleep, that super-dense roar which comes after consciousness but before Freudian REM? Some might say it's infinitely richer than either the conscious or the dreaming state of awareness. And it never cares whether we're happy or sad, only whether we're exhausted. Why not live on inside of that?"

Locke laughed. Jacob smiled in turn. "So, you're telling me that if you're suicidal, you should go spend your entire life – as some kind of subconscious ghost? That's ridiculous".

Some silence and movement were required. Jacob put his hands on his hips and went to stare blankly at the radiator.

"I remember the day that Apollo 11 was launched. Everyone was excited. The three astronauts processed through the crowds towards their moon rocket. And I remember hearing one of the newscasters saying, 'You get a feeling that people think of these men as not just superior men but different creatures. They are like people who have gone into the other world and returned, and you sense they bear secrets that we will never entirely know, and they will never entirely be able to explain'".

Locke struggled with the angle of his wheelchair. He spoke passionately, "But this is exactly my point. That was a snapshot of _consciousness._ No kind of ghost can sit back and savour it's memories, or look forward to the future. It's better to just die. I tell you: in this communal universe, consciousness isn't even given a _chance_ to progress".

Jacob put his hands in his pockets, stared at the ground with good-natured servility. "You can only die once. Anything that happens before then is progress".

"You're wrong", Locke practically spat. "Oh, we can be perfectly defined in this life, but our actions are meaningless because they're so mired in other people's lazy, capitalist arrogance. If people had any kind of soul, they'd pray just to be transported to heaven, right now. Instead, all they care about is greed, faux-altruism, always reaching the end, as though it's something other than a nursing home, a disintegrating body, a death-rattle. They are parochial creatures: you know it, I know it".

It was time for Jacob to rise. He tapped his thighs and delivered a highly benevolent frown. Enjoyment of the argument? To a small degree, though it must never interfere with business. Almost certainly, the gloss darkness of the hotel room didn't suit the contemplative lines of his face.

"Everyone's got to start somewhere. People are like children. We should persevere with them", he said.

Then – never had so much tension been seen in a wheelchair-bound man's arms. He gripped the side-rails, gave way to a horrible energy. "I tried to persevere with them! I gave them the benefit of the doubt at every turn, and I did that right up to the point when they drove me crazy! Now I just want to go and get away by any means necessary!"

Jacob walked slowly to the door. "I hope one day that feeling will go".

Locke, "Not likely!"

A childish, excitable relish made him grope for his gun even before Jacob had properly left the room. The desire to resume the endgame ebbed, even in time with his heartbeat. His eyes went wide as Jacob became a silhouette, hands slouched in pockets, just inside the frame. Funnily enough, the corridor was coloured in pleasant, hypnotic yellow.

"Your radiator is working. You could turn it on if you get cold".

"Goodbye, Jacob", said Locke, perfectly evil.

The door was closed and became a meditative sliver of golden-yellow. Locke wheeled himself back to the centre of the room and smiled unhealthily. He stared at the black-blue ceiling in admiration of – something wild, unnameable, eternal. He continued to smile as he reset the gun to his temple. The radiator made a contracting noise; three loud clangs, which he hated because they reminded him so much of Jacob's knocks at the door.

Then the radiator made further noises. Nothing that should specifically grab his attention. Nevertheless, he laboriously wheeled himself to examine it. Close-up, the thing was largely generic with milky gloss paint beset by craters and scars, ancient, maintained with poignant devotion. The end valve was missing, he noted – in fact, around the hole, the metal was sheer and un-tapered, reducing the entire thing to a lifeless husk.

Locke leant precariously from his chair to look within. On the other side – another hotel room. He gaped. The place on the other side was slightly brighter, perhaps with more efficient wall-mounted lights, though something told him it was clearly of the same class as his own; a dingy hotel where the world goes to die.

After a time, weirdly, a cathode-antiquated television set was wheeled several yards in front of the other end of the hole. It was being pushed there by strong, practical hands. Familiar –

Juliet.

Locke gasped in shock and excitement, though he couldn't quite bring himself to call to her. In any case, she saw him. Emitted from her eyes, that same omniscient, subversively-optimistic smile, even as she busied herself in some kind of delicate operation. Yes; the video recorder was activated, to show – Juliet; footage of her which had been recorded earlier in the confines of a private room. Locke stared, haunted, just able to comprehend what she was doing. His beloved stood beside the television set which showed her own solemn figure. She started to talk. Meanwhile, the Juliet on the screen produced messages written boldly on white A2. This must be to thwart any listening bugs which had been left by Jacob or the hysterically left-wing hotel management.

"John, we have to accept that Jacob made a valid point", spoke Juliet.

'_JACOB IS A FOOL'_, was the message produced by the deathly-serious Juliet of the video.

"I know it's hard, but we have to fall in with the humans", continued the flesh-and-blood Juliet.

The video; '_THE HUMANS ARE DOOMED'._

"We're going through a transition, John", she said. "We have to believe that living in a communal reality with the humans is part of it. I love you, and nothing will change that".

Burning with passion as nothing he'd seen before, the previously-recorded Juliet turned to the last page of the A2 pad. '_ALL WILL BECOME CLEAR. GO TO BED AND SLEEP. THE BLACK IRON PRISON WILL FALL. I LOVE YOU. SLEEP'_.

For a time, both of the Juliets shot him the same imploring look. Perhaps the flesh-and-blood one was infinitesimally more sonorous, the one in the video more critical. But they both spoke of love, and determination, and both made him feel vital again.

"Juliet, I was wrong! I love you!"

She turned her head slightly as if at the approach of footsteps. As a last effort, she lay her fingertips across the lower left of the TV screen, obviously signalling the word, 'SLEEP'. And then the entirety of the other hotel room went black.

Limp hands crawled across his mouth, alive with very earnest ideas about how to proceed. Hotel mattresses are generally neither high or low quality, plus his appreciation of any kind of bed was mired by only having sensation from his torso upwards. So his adrenaline surged, his thoughts rushed but went – nowhere. Even though there was an abundance of meaning and passion, the exposition sprawled; there was too little action. And what are we to do? Spend our lives buying trash airport-stand thrillers, hope we can read them in the voice of godly Morgan Freeman? Watch bad films, pray to gods who love 'everyone', as if this is of any use?

And he brooded that she could have asked him to do anything else in the world, go out and kill a politician, make a bomb, crash a plane. He'd have done it, coolly and confidently. But sleep was impossible. He lay flat and tried to slow his heartbeat. He even closed his eyes for a few seconds, trying to think and feel nothing.

No. No. Sleep is for the humans. He growled and writhed, gave a sort of primal yell. Briefly, he curved his spine into a half-sitting position, before sharply falling down. Eventually, something made him look down at his feet. The toes on his right foot gingerly obeyed the command to wiggle. Leaning forward, he drew up his thighs - and that was it. The crippling of John Locke was finished. In truth, he hardly felt any gratitude or awe. A miracle. Tell it to the humans in the pub; they'll listen sporadically and wind it back to their own anecdotes. A miracle, and the humans in the pub are like dust in the wind.

Event two: he found he'd been flashed away from the Death Room to reappear somewhere entirely new. It was a vast iron chamber. The central space where his bed lay was well-illuminated, while the corners were just-about discernible in dust-ridden darkness. Reference the projected psychic stereotypes of alien abductions, and grow up, it's just a meditative blank page.

"I guess it's as easy as that", beamed Juliet tearfully.

Locke moved at a relaxed pace to the edge of the bed.

"You", he said, "how I love you".

They took the decision to embrace, with Locke laying his jaw over her beautiful satin hair and staring outwards at god's vacuum. Time could easily have been slowed to an indeterminate pace, but, not that there's anything wrong with that, they chose to break and stare at each other.

"It feels different here", said Locke.

"How does it feel to have your legs back?", asked Juliet brightly.

"I always kind of knew it was psychosomatic". He looked critically at his thighs, then gave the broad smile of his (after)life. "I was only ever operating at ninety-nine percent capacity in my beliefs, but the space between ninety-nine and a hundred was always a gulf the size of the Grand Canyon, the Australian Outback, God's Desert Island!"

Juliet smiled; could not even stand to blink her eyes. "This is much better than 2001. I think we've done better than a giant space-baby emerging on the other side".

"I hear that", Locke agreed. His body and soul tingled; he gasped orgasmically. "This feeling, Juliet! What does it feel like to you?"

She gave a ponderous look, which he enjoyed immensely. Beneath the light, her form was neither light or dark, but somehow wholly illuminated as per an old-style Kodak slide. "I guess it feels a little like being drunk. Being hyped on coffee. Staying in bed on a winter's morning because it's been so bitterly fought-for. Being outraged on the most personal level then having that outrage sated. It feels like being exhausted, then immediately having energy enough to take on the world".

Locke grinned. "I absolutely concur".

"You know we've got a world of work ahead of us?"

"No time like the present", he said. "But I still feel a little -ambient".

Juliet moved to the side of the bed where a plastic chain-store bag was leaning. She withdrew the record, 'Songs which it's impossible to feel sad while listening to'_. _As she placed it on the turn table, Locke studiously examined the track-listings. 'Higher and Higher', by Jackie Wilson. 'Israelites' by Des Dekker. 'In a Beautiful Place', Boards of Canada. He took the stylus and held it just above track three, 'Everywhere' by Fleetwood Mac. Then at the last moment, Juliet held his hand, placed his finger tips over track four, Wings, 'Live and Let Die'.

Because it was too tempting not to.

"We should lose these corporeal bodies", she said urgently.

They held each other close. Locke brandished the Jericho. Juliet unveiled her own little handgun. They looped arms and held each weapon under the other's chin.

"Where shall we go first?", she asked him.

"How about _everywhere?_", smiled Locke.

There was no discernible delay between each shot. There was little echo.

From the confines of the chamber, two figures stepped clear. One was a grizzled-looking man in a U-boat captain's hat. The other, an alt-girlish red-head.

The grizzled-looking man, Jeph, said, "I like John Locke: he's O.K".

"I like Juliet", said the alt-girlish red-head, Barbara.

"At some point we should recruit them", suggested Jeph.

"Yes indeed", said Barbara.

Whether the Third Great Machine had really been activated was a matter of conjecture. Gradually, the consensus was that it had. This, as the dead started to return to life.

Of course, none of the observers could quite separate the moment between their being absent and the moment when they appeared. They were just unveiled, from timelessness into timelessness, stop-motion. Take this exchange between Libby and Hurley, for instance. An hour or two had passed since the activation of Machines One and Two. Lots of the Oceanics and the Bishop party had gravitated, quite naturally, to the top of the hill which lay beside the Ankh Station. Hurley could only churn the ground childishly with his golf club. Jin eyed him fondly and resolved to play a round with him at some point soon. Meanwhile, the sky was unnaturally bright; no one could doubt that there was some form of neo-divinity at play in the myriad spikes of light, a kaleidoscope, a superimposed map of ye-olde-world constellations. Whenever the awareness of the luscious panorama hit a certain threshold, the sky would flare with a mescaline glow of violet, deep blue, childhood-summer blue.

Hurley stared up at it and smiled indulgently. He stared at the horizon. All of a sudden, he found he was staring at Libby. Gentleman, start your goosebumps; she immediately hugged him and in exchange he picked her up and staggered in a weird, tiny dance. It was then necessary to hold her, not look at her, assess the living energy of the moment.

"_Where did you go_?", he asked, though he knew it was nigh a moot point.

She relaxed back in his arms and brushed aside a strand of his hair.

"You mean, 'Where did _we_ go?' Oh, Hurley, we went to the place where no one ever wins the lottery, because no one trusts themselves to".

He relaxed too, and cried a little. More moot questions, and spoke with trembling, childish lips. "Uh, why? Why did we go there?"

"Does it matter?"

Hurley delivered a frown of profundity, directed to the question, directed to the distant and all-loving sun.

"No. Yes? I don't know".

Libby spoke in an awed tone. He thought: we've survived such a hell of a terrible expedition. Her beautiful, clear eyes like mountain stream pebbles once more.

"We went to that place so that the numbers could be written, where they belong. Four, Eight, Fifteen, Sixteen, Twenty-Three, Forty-Two. There at the heart of every quantum wave, the frequency code which balances gestalt reality".

" 'Gestalt' ", said Hurley. "That means, 'togetherness', right?"

"We planned it all", she said lightly.

Disturbed, and releasing all the ennui that had spent so much time building, Hurley looked away in anguish.

"I don't care. Look at me. I'll never know why you love me".

But Libby corrected him at once. "You'll never know how _much_".

They stared at each other, and it was much better than all the dis-amnesia in the world.

"Dude", he said, incredibly softly, the arch-angel to arch-angels. "Like, I knew I should have been more cryptic, though. It always freaked me out that fifteen and sixteen were sequential. No wonder I went nuts".

Libby laughed joyously. He stared at her finely-curled hair, and lord how he'd missed it.

"Our next project won't be as hard. It's time we kicked back and had some fun I think".

She was already leaning up close to his ear. He asked what she had in mind and she whispered coolly.

"_Hollywood. We've got the green light to remake The Phantom Menace_".

Lover-boy Sayid became numb as he noticed Shannon standing near a broken-down Papya tree. He staggered, infinitely more frightened than Hurley had been with Libby.

"Is that really you?", he asked, as if in a dream.

"I don't know", she said as they approached each other. "You tell me".

He smiled, medium to rare. "I think I am your watermark. No one would dare forge you".

He lifted her up; her nose wrinkled with insurmountable joy, and this is surely the image which pharmacies use for photo-wallets. Sayid spun her around thinking, 'Two unrealistically happy holiday makers'. He examined her face; he'd done it so often in his memory since her death, it was like sending a high-speed train down curved, momentum-loving tracks.

"Squeeze me to death!", she smiled evilly.

Those eyes; to the outside world, so judgmental, capricious to the point of being cruel, aloof to the point of god-like impatience. Yet Sayid would have her with him until the end of time, as his connection to life, purpose, love. Shannon Rutherford, the name which had been given to the refinement of all human discernment. Because show me a human being who isn't selfishness incarnate. This incarnation, he felt sure, was alone in all possible worlds as the one with the hungriest, most beautiful eyes. She would yet redeem them all.

Boon sidled up with his hands in his pockets.

"So you died a few years before me. I suppose you're going to use this in some kind of point-scoring?"

Shannon shook her head, though it could equally have been the tiny movement of a world-class fashion model on camera. Acidly, "Dead is dead, Boon". She frowned, then made eye-contact. "So I guess you're just going to have to stay that short. Ha!"

"Hilarious". They hugged, navel gazing begone.

"All the dead people are returning", said Jin. "You were right: clearly, having a day away from the beach is good for having daydreams come true".

They sat peacefully beneath the gnarled Elys tree, the highest point of the hill. Jin smiled primly at nothing except the outline of the mountains and the feel of his wife's tiny hands.

"Isn't it romantic?, Sun observed the resurrected women, impossibly bold beneath the New Sunlight.

"'Romantic'", he raised his eyebrows jokily. "You're the only 'romantic' I can handle".

They drew forward and then lay back together with their heads against the trunk. It was true The Island had never been more beautiful, and the sight of it never made the Oceanics more thoughtful. On the grass and foliage, I can see the frequency of dazzling neon in the light spectrum; processing the information beyond the retina, however, it just seems –normal. God's stalwart beauty and that is all.

Given time, Sawyer swaggered past arm in arm with FBI Agent Olivia Dunham. In the other arm was a huge crate of 7.5 % vol Dharma beers.

He tossed a can to Jin, smiling broadly. "Hi-Ho, raft-mate! How's the big day treatin' ya?"

"I am happy, Sawyer. I am 'taking it on the chin'".

Sawyer laughed, shook his head. "No more Hawaii 5-O rough stuff for us, old buddy o' mine".

Sun gestured for a can. "None for me?"

Sawyer frowned. "In your condition, missy? Not a chance".

Olivia regarded him proudly. She smiled apologetically at Sun and handed her an orange Top Deck.

After they'd gone, Sun smiled sweetly up at her husband. "It's funny that Sawyer should have mentioned the raft. I was just thinking about it myself".

"Really? I thought you hated the idea of the raft?"

Sun confessed, "I hated it when I thought we could still die. Now? I think I'd like to leave this place, as beautiful as it is. I think I'd like to travel. I mean, this island is only – ten miles wide? We deserve to see something of the world after all we've been through. I want to see huge glass skyscrapers, I want to go to your home village, I want to visit sweet-smelling stores and buy silly Audrey Hepburn dresses".

Jin creased his brow charmingly. "So… you would like us to rebuild the raft?

She hugged his arm like a ladder-rung, now staring at the horizon with post-daydreaming eyes.

"Perhaps in the future. Even now, I would feel odd giving birth and caring for a child on a raft, on the open sea. For the moment, The Island will have to do!"

They relaxed fully against the tree-trunk. Small, unusual-looking seabirds flew with some determination in the space of their half-closed eyes. Such relaxation, on The Island of all places. Jin nursed his beer and enjoyed entirely warm, lazy thoughts.

A colossal rumble shook the ground. There was no quantifying it; the packed mud at their feet rumbled as of a universal, subterranean spasm. In the middle distance, at the inner and outer edge of the valley, whole tree-lines moved like reconnoitring snakes. Interestingly, not one of them fell; the effect must be much deeper than the roots, noted Sun. The crawling of the landscape took place as far as the eye could see, just as the primed sunrays search-lit this bestubbled mound, that sink-like basin.

More than one of the Oceanics felt sure this must be the arrival of God on High. It was no earthquake. The far edge of the horizon tilted in the manner of a millionaire's train-set table being tilted. In other places, perhaps, a lizard moving beneath a butcher's astroturf. But somehow these similes are all too gaudy. They always are. Writers are so lazy. Hills, plateauxs and scrub-woods arose and caught the light with breath-taking elegance, even before the resetting of the planet had begun in earnest. The curvature of the world, moving in grand-cosmic ease, started to invert. What used to be the natural vanishing point, even from the top of some showboating mountain, was expanded by hundreds of miles as the curvature not only levelled out but rose by several degrees. To allow the eyes to probe, pick out the details which lay hundreds of miles away, was satisfaction incomparable. Everyone examined the impossibly far-distanced plains, swamps, the mystery industrial fields being consumed by weeds and bulrushes. So much blue and ozone-beguiled green, still with some kind of mystic, aesthetic proviso that ranks of white buildings, no matter how distant, should always be vaguely discernible. The sea, in this part of the new world, had contracted into jagged lochs and estuaries, and, no scruples, it hardly bothered anyone that they were seeing large bodies of water with concave inclinations. Not a person thought of vindicating the flat-earth fanatics, either medieval or modern day, because deep down they'd always known it was psychic, subjective. The earth is bigger than anyone can conceive, and Darwin, your theory was so derisory and obvious you may as well have been the man who invented America's Got Talent.

The shape of the Earth, at least, was now at a standstill. However, as the Oceanics looked around, more and more new features could be seen. Firstly, the statues and monuments. There were anti-cosmopolitan city peripherals over-shadowed entirely by their most famous landmarks. They were nearly all discoloured by the distant atmosphere, plus the Islanders had to somehow turn around more 360 degrees to see them all, but nevertheless – there it was, the Burj Khalifa of Dubai, the St. Mary Axe Gherkin of London, the Flash Gordon-esque Jin Mao building of Shanghai.

In particular, Jack found himself haunted by the hazy, fearfully-far-off Christ the Redeemer, there in some truncated and subdued version of Rio de Janeiro. It was eerie: as ever, the man spread his arms in some all-important invocation, yet from this distance the gesture seemed -arbitrary. He turned just a little to see their own monument, the fertility goddess Taweret. And in this new world, she'd been joined. A hundred plus feet tall, she stared out to sea as ever, but now there was an outcrop rising from the water just beside her. Upon which sat the125ft Lord Shiva, previously of the Murudeshwar Temple in India. They smiled at each other, simultaneously looked business-like and deep in collaboration.

He was only drawn away from the sight by a swift movement in the corner of his eye. It was a robin, which had fluttered from a tree to land on Kate's hand. Her giggle was an new paradigm of surprise. The tiny creature jumped around thoughtfully to find a new direction, bowed its head, flew high into the purplish sky.

"That reminds me, Jack, there's something I've been meaning to do".

She zipped open a long, waxy bag which she'd carried up from the Ankh Station, and Jack thought, 'I'll do anything as long as it only matters to she and I'. He looked down into the valley to see his father contentedly playing golf with Charles Whitmore, Desmond and Penny. This kind of happiness, he thought, is appreciable to all but always non-divisible. Louis Armstrong singing 'Wonderful World', yet the resulting daydreams always belong to me.

She stood before him, beaming, with a mighty Dharma Initiative box kite.

He made to grab for the hand-grip, but she jumped back. "You're the runner, boy", she said breathlessly.

"What?", Jack smiled and winced. "Do I need to remind you, you could always run faster than me? I refer you to occasions one to five when we were chased by The Others, chased by Whitmore's henchmen, chased by the polar bears".

Kate held the kite low and readied herself like a quarterback. "How do you know I wasn't killed, in the end, by a polar bear? We could have been flashing sideways and full of amnesia for a long time".

Jack stared at the ground with a slight, sad grin. He held his beer over his mouth and confessed, "I never flew a kite before".

"Oh, Jack, that's terrible", she said, almost sincerely. "But I'll play Dr Melfi for you later. Right now we gotta get this thing in the air. Come on, let's go!"

Sawyer, passing by in the background, couldn't resist chipping in. "Look Doc, we all know I won our little alpha-male contest, the least you can do is fly the lady's kite".

Olivia explained, "He's just jealous you two got bagsies on the only kite on the Island".

Jack took the canvas and ran parallel with Kate, down the side of the valley, out towards the vast flanks of peppery grass. The wind: geed-up perfectly. He was glad he'd left the others behind for a while. Dialogue, dialogue. It was like having every show on TV suddenly written by a Dennis Potter or a Joss Whedon, all pregnant, edgy dialogue - still only A-to-B plot-progression. Time to let me decide what's important, he thought. Kate ran at a wild, bumpy pace. When she laughed, her abdomen creased as if from a sucker-punch. All too often, she laughed so hard that tiny tears were courted. This, he thought, by a long way, is all I care about. The kite lifted from his hands so falteringly it was weird. Up it went into the sun-spiked sky, and impossibly high. A little way off from the sun-doodled corner of the sky, the atmosphere became more conservative, more ambient. Once or twice, he even saw a nigh-transparent moon, heedless and lost until the fall of night. Kate ran on, whooping, heading roughly in the direction of the crater-like ridge, beyond which stood their hundred foot friends.

Jack leant on his knees and panted. "Don't get it lodged in the statue!"

Boon looked to his left at lover-boy Sayid and Shannon. He looked to his right at Hurley and Libby. It all seemed annoyingly straight-forward. The sight of a particularly glass-fronted city some twenty miles away promised that he could walk into the first bar he came to and meet Inna, the beautiful Russian waitress he'd dated at high school, and that would be it. Except, except. Life or (after)life, he didn't care; there needed to be the gentle feel of some uncooperative god, unsympathetic to all but the most mystical of humans.

In short, there needed to be a John Locke.

"So, we're all just going to sit here while he's trapped on the other side of that blast-door?"

Sayid shrugged. "Everyone is happy. _Everyone_. Can't you feel it, Boon? Wherever he is, he's content, because that's what we've all spent our lives growing into".

It was true there was a palpable psychic buzz, a type of universal joy pulling all the strings. Except—

"I'm not talking about the 'joy', I'm talking about the - meaning".

"Locke was a weird guy", said Hurley. "Perhaps we're only worried about him because we can't imagine what a dude like that even _does_ to be happy. For all we know, he's out there somewhere in sit-com suburbia. You know, '8 Simple Rules' with our man playing the pipe-and-slippers husband".

They glanced at each other, almost believing it was possible.

Boon looked up sharply. A small African boy strolled into view, chaperoned seemingly by a colossal dark shadow. He looked up further; Eko looked down, smiled eagerly.

"Gentlemen, I think it was Winston Churchill who said, 'There is not only more to this life and death business than we know, there is more than we can _ever_ know'! Some men can simply put this out of their heads, but to other men, it is a life-long lure! The question is, where has it lured our friend John?"

Evidently, a group decision had been made. They all rose, sauntered down the hill. Sayid took an ear of corn and held it between his lips. Shannon copied him and they laughed drunkenly.

Near the peripheral of the Ankh Station, Walter was performing some kind of experiment on Charlie as he played his guitar. Electrodes hung from the boy's head and ran to a bizarre fusion of electroencephalogram and Dr Frankenstien power-rod.

Boon addressed the old man impatiently.

"You're a scientist, right? We need something that can blow a hole in feet-thick metal".

Charlie was twitchy. "Do you mind, fella? Can't you see we're busy?"

"This is important", Boon said dispassionately.

"Look, Boon", Charlie was amiable. "Dr Bishop's trying to help me channel the spirit of Jimmy Page. What could be more important than that?"

"We've got to find out what happened to Locke. We've waited long enough".

Claire jiggled the tiny, Buddha-like form of Aaron, simultaneously brushing Charlie's shoulder. "Come on, Charlie. Locke always looked after us. I always thought that if anything happened to Jack, he'd be the one to protect us all, right?"

"I guess", said Charlie, and ceased his wrong-noted rendition of 'Stairway to Heaven'. This put Walter into a tizzy, causing him to spring up sharply from his science-station viewing lens.

"Mr Pace! You have stopped playing, you have stopped concentrating. I often think that if I weren't here to prompt you, you would stop breathing! Is it really so arduous to-"

"Dr Bishop", said Boon. "We have a new project. We have to find out what happened to John".

In the Black Universe, life was entirely methodical, a requisite utilitarian philosophy based on hubris. Eagle pitched steadily away from Columbia, in the sure and certain knowledge that Mike would be orbiting around again, loyalty incarnate. Away into the almighty void, then. Oddly enough, there was an abundance of love even in the apparent desolation. A dozen ways of dying just scant millimetres beyond their suits and the tin-foil-thickness ship. Yet all God asked for them to be protected was that they _act_, follow their sense of _zeal_. Neil looked through his funny triangular window at the moon. Buzz, through his, at the endless dark.

They passed through the beautiful kaleidoscope of the First Great Machine, hardly looking. Vincent followed loyally, wondering at the funny white garment of his new master, the way it seemed bright and clinical, but also smelt strongly of Oreos and bacon. On entering the chamber of the Second Great Machine, Walter staggered a little and glanced up into the white-light void. His eyes twinkled, his cheeks became gaunt with awe. "I must confess this room stirs in me a feeling of wonder and fear. You see, it is exactly how I've always visualised the heart of a neutron. Such unerring fissure! The subatomic equivalent of a hundred thousand glowing bi-planes lunging at a King Kong of pure energy!"

Boon looked up and felt mildly interested, though he couldn't think of a thing to say. They progressed through to the anteroom of the Third Great Machine. Peter Bishop was leaning against the blast-door, deeply absorbed in – something. He blearily gazed down at his outstretched hands – which were a blur of movement. Periodically, the blur slowed to a conceivable human speed, and Boon could see that he was running a succession of coins along his knuckles, but at a breathtaking rate and with breathtaking confidence.

"My son", boasted Walter, "the great entertainer".

Peter's voice was steady, still smiling. "It's almost addictive. That it looks entertaining to the crowd is just an added bonus. But if you're that impressed, I may start doing it _really_ quickly. God knows what I'm like on the piano now, but I'm pretty sure I could take it down to the underworld, introduce myself as Orpheus, and King Hades would just have to give us whoever we want".

Walter took his son's shoulders and they hugged.

"I am pleased to say, son, that there will be no more exchanges with Death".

The Oceanics tensed in confusion as Walter's trademark theatrics lapsed. But no sooner had they vanished than they reappeared. He frantically looked around for some specialised instrument, before realising his palms would work just as well. It was with a naïve, childish hope that he slapped at the blast-door frame in an attempt to find even the tiniest hollow point or imperfection. He worked hard; Vincent moved next to him and sniffed at the metal. "That's it, Laika, you help me". And evidently, a weak spot _was_ found. He spun around, deep in feverish theorising, marched a little way up the corridor, spun around again, held his two index fingers parallel as a universal model for courting polarities.

"Peter, do you remember the Adventure of the Molecularly-Destabilised Bank Vault?"

His son laughed, a rare moment lacking even trace amounts of cynicism. "I like the way you say 'The Adventure of -' as though it's a Sherlock Holmes story".

"No. Holmes was wrong. 'Once you eliminate the impossible, all that remains, no matter how implausible, must be the truth'. Yet on an apophatic level, the very existence of consciousness renders the definition of the word 'implausible' entirely moot. Therefore, the mystery itself is an a-linear conspiracy orchestrated by these 'impossible' things, so that we engage with and begin to worship them".

Peter gasped, and laughed. He looked at the Oceanics and apologised. "Walter, calm down –point a). Point b)—what does Jones' bank robbery have to do with getting through this blast door? Even assuming you could build a high-frequency psion-emitter –the work of decades- there isn't enough energy on this whole island to power it".

"No", conceded Walter. He produced a chalk and marked a tiny spot on either side of the door. "But we need only target these two spots, the location of the servo mechanisms. Once they are cut, the door will be freed up, though of course it will still be laborious to lift, we could always make some kind of lever system. I think, if we run a high-feed electro-magnetic cable-"

"Or-", a huge shape appeared before Walter, "we can just pray".

Eko wielded the fifteen kilo lump hammer as though it was something he'd been born to. His brother produced a quizzical, -why deny it?- _serene_ look, calmly stepping back into the silver-flecked confines of the anteroom. It was to be a ceremony. Sayid arrived with a second hammer, positioned himself at Eko's back.

Supremely undaunted, the first few strikes were made. In no time, there was that satisfying hypnogogic rhythm which is always made when two people hammer at the same time. Call it God seizing on tiny, existential moments of weakness, rejoicing as they're swept up in the beat once more. Boon felt a weird and terrible excitement -after so many weeks in the purity of John's company, the Dharma beer had well-and-truly gone to his head. Drunkenness is time travel into the heart of post-human nostalgia, post-human ambition. He looked at the expectant faces of Hurley, Jin and Sun, felt like crying at that unknowable, arch-idiosyncratic loyalty. Thus Spake Zarathustra.

And John, we're coming to save you.

Of course, at first and for a long time, there was only the most impervious-sounding thuds. Over Walter's chalk marks, two ugly brown scratches were all they had to show for their efforts. Not really progress at all; Boon glared hard to see that it was just thin traces of iron from where the lump-hammers themselves had started to disintegrate.

At fifteen minutes in, the marks transformed into complex, nigh-geometric dents, still no more pronounced than a printed circuit or the engravings on a coin. At twenty, the patterns resembled a three-dimensional Jackson Pollock miasma, about as deep as a kitchen plate. All thought, however, all aesthetic reflection, was gone. Those present felt themselves synched-in with Sayid and Eko's heartrates, their fierce-but-steady breathing. With the Herculean effort, in the god-spurious blue light, the men were no doubt finding it hard to think straight. Walter, a model of crazy person authority previously unseen by mankind, smoothly took charge. Holding up his palms like Pope John Paul, they ceased the hammer blows. Laika barked his excitement, his fascination.

They could find no crowbars to test if the blast-door was able to be jimmied. In the end, the Oceanics were forced to use the lip of an oversized metal sack-truck to try and drive a wedge. Boon prepared to take one of the plastic handles. As he did so, he looked round and was warmed to see how many of the others had come inside to witness the rescue. The members of Flight 815 crowded as close as they could to lay suction-like palms on the metal door, slide upwards as hard as they could. Charlie, Sawyer, Claire. Jin -with Shannon curved tightly at his back as an extra muscle- strained with all his might. Bodies slid together. A brief-tho-vivid hallucination saw John himself standing at the peripheral, wild-eyed because it was exactly the sort of practical-mysterious challenge he loved. But Boon blinked and thin air fell in once more.

The door gave no feeling of movement. The base held fast to the ground. Eko collapsed backwards and wiped the crown of his head, leaving behind a thick smear of blood. Olivia moved to examine his injury.

An empathetic frown, together with an alt-judgmental smile, was enough to let him know he was out of the game. Rising, she flicked her eyes to the spare hammer. Sawyer, scowling purposefully, tested the weight and fell-in beside Sayid. From his mouth, no kind of comment at all, a serious business, story and characterisation mutually inclusive.

The hammering powered on; it started to churn the metal with each strike. All pulses raced, all palms grew sweaty. They were young, their hearts: open books. Intimate a risk to their eternal souls and the struggle would have continued regardless. Brows creased upwards as of trauma, mouths turned teddy-bear tentative. Hope? Hope is childish. The Oceanics showed faith. Boon pushed at the handles of the sack truck and they thrusted forwards dramatically. To the others, there was still no sensation that the door had moved, even by a few millimetres. Nevertheless, a first purchase was there. They pressed themselves mightily against the sheer surface, heaving upwards. Hands turned red. Limp jaws exhaled. No one prayed.

The first shock was the animalistic screech of deeply-stubborn metal. The second shock was more subtle, the fact that there was now a twenty-inch gap, yet no John had appeared, holding his eyes low, smiling at his rescuers.

'He can't be dead', thought Boon, and felt he was sensing some grand, communal realisation. Everyone clustered around. Kneeling or laying, they held their cheeks to the floor, all with exactly the same twinkle in their eyes. It was a pleasant little twinkle, able to be seen from far off inside the pitch blackness. Olivia withdrew her field torch and probed into the dark.

It was surprising, the sense of ungodly fear. H P Lovecraft, M R James, William Peter Blatty. The collective intuition, if Boon was any real judge, was that they were children who'd made a mortifying mistake. He remembered in 'The Blair Witch Project', no one had left the tent to confront the marauder-in-the-dark. In much the same way, no one slid their arm under the blast-door, or shouted out, for fear of attracting The Monster. The Monster which is wholly inhuman, disincarnate, unknowable, yet we instinctively sense is real because we worship it with the hairs on the back of our necks. A dark little flash between the deep branches of a middle-of-nowhere jungle. A lost soul, probably, but lost from conceptual reality itself.

The blast of sound was perfectly alienesque. All present flailed backwards. Sun, in particular, clung to the far wall of the anteroom and winced in something approaching hysteria. It started with a single, sonorous wailing, a piece of mockery for anyone who'd ever jumped out of their skin at a fog-horn blast. Because now they really _should_ be nervous. Next came the creeping sound. It was quite impossible to deconstruct or draw parallels; a sound which evoked thoughts of some stealthy, venomous snake – but didn't actually _resemble_ a stealthy, venomous snake. A plague of locusts? No, too regular. Also, what was the background of the sound? Rustling; the rustling leaves of the Tree of Knowledge of Life and Death. Stealthy and surreptitious-sounding, and all of it just to mock God. Your precious, non-interventionist God.

They knew instinctively that it was the sound of the End of the World.

Eko held his crucifix awkwardly and slid his body forward towards the gap. Olivia, who had seen this type of crazy human reaction before, tried and failed to stop him. What lay inside the gap was a sight difficult to process. _Something_ moved close to the ground with the motion and self-assurance of an intemperate lion. It perused the outside world –

-and with the rapidity of waking from nightmare, it was out and poised above them, a tumultuous column of living, deep-black smoke. No doubt at all. In every inclination, there was the power of some wholly-triumphant demon. Fallen deity. Crushed believer. The weirdly-echoing siren blast emitted again; the humans shrank back beautifully. Olivia levelled her gun, with the smoke-creature jutting sharply, never quite moving to harm her. She winced at the eagerly-probing tip, even as Walter, Peter and the Eight-Fifteens stared impotently at the main trunk. The sheer scale! The Gorn approaches Kirk and sucks at the air; the captain runs away because the New Gods know that all battles are won by suave inhumanity.

Live to be a hundred, then, and there's no explaining the caprice of the Smoke Monster. The illusion of weight where there was obviously none, the expanding nebulas which made up its body, the delicate tie-dyed effect whenever it moved in pseudo-temporal bursts. Olivia gasped in horror at the thought of what it's mind must be like.

And then a second Smoke Creature emerged from the tiny gap. This situation; all of it mind-boggling. Monster Number Two was satin-coloured with glittering flecks, faintly luminous to boot. Both of them proceeded to move among the rescuers, peering high and low, always exhibiting some kind of dark, intellectual vice. Everyone froze in icy tension; the creatures obviously found this curious and moved ponderously around thighs, abdomens, upwards across luggage-strap-taut shoulder blades. Both creatures seemed to be of the same character – sensual, thoughtful, delighting in their own fearful power.

Black arched magnificently above the tiny, mewling Aaron. Claire reacted with the crazed, vicious look which is the entitlement of all protective mothers. Nothing. It swept to the left, then the right, to try and examine Aaron the better. Claire presented her back to the creature, and surely some ire must follow, except –

"Heroin", said Charlie quietly.

Everyone turned to see him reaching up and touching the Satin Smoke Monster. He smiled giddily, closed his eyes, rocked on his heels.

"Guys", he explained, still in some kind of ecstasy, "when I touch it, it feels like heroin".

Walter bustled to the fore. "Everyone stand clear, please. Let me examine the creatures. They're obviously heavily-abstracted forms of consciousness, but consciousness nonetheless. Rest assured, if I am able to read the thoughts shown by individual synapse-flares in a quahadron-mapped frontal lobe, I can surely deconstruct what these mighty creatures are thinking".

And no sooner had Walter said this than the Black and Satin Smoke Monsters moved directly above him. He stared at the rippling, warping bodies . "On the other hand, it might conceivably be disrespectful to second guess our visitors".

The monsters fell back alongside each other. Olivia held the gun in her left hand, weakly, at angle, in difference to the most basic FBI firearm training.

"Guys", said Hurley, breathing heavily, embarrassed at the breaking of his humility. "I can tell you what they're thinking".

"How?", said Sawyer the Pragmatist. "You got a little black cloud of smoke where your brain should be?"

Libby laid a hand on Hurley's shoulder, looked deep into his eyes, nowhere else. "Everything happens for a reason. If you can understand them – don't be afraid".

He frowned and looked at the floor, clearly embarrassed at both the intimacy and the showboating of god-telepathy.

"The black one says, because of our lack of decisiveness, we deserve to die, but he's not going to let that happen because he loves us".

"That's real sweet", said Sawyer darkly, causing the Satin Smoke to surge forward and loom above him.

Urgently, "Hurley?"

Hurley blinked and steadily relayed what was on the creature's mind. "It just said, '_James_' –but, you know, uh, affectionately?"

Sawyer looked surprised, and swaggered. "Well baby, whattta ya got a make those eyes at me for?"

Reported Hurley, "They're chuckling at that".

Boon looked at the creeping clouds of smoke. He observed the way Vincent sat down, immediately stood up again, wagged his tail violently and smiled up at the Black Smoke. He struggled to understand, and felt ridiculous.

"Where is John Locke?", he demanded.

The Smoke Creatures retreated into the parted sea of plane-wreck survivors. Sayid and Shannon regarded Sun and Jin standing at the far side of the billowing clouds, in fact, felt as though they were seeing them for the very first time, and in such a mescaline-seared atmos. The columns of smoke drew together in a slight zig-zag. They did not overlap, or if they did, managed to avoid diluting each other's colours.

"Did you hear what I said? Where is John Locke?"

Hurley gulped. "They say he's gone to heaven".

"Isn't _this_ heaven?", asked Sayid poignantly.

The monsters rose above their heads, rippled slightly, otherwise did not fidget. Black regarded Sayid keenly.

"They're saying, 'Yes. No. This is just the place where people can move freely without being tortured by a spiteful, quasi-Buddhist entropy' -whatever that means".

Sayid, and indeed the rest, had no idea how to respond and so remained silent. Evidently, the Black Smoke chose to elaborate. Hurley spoke without expression, never missing a beat. " 'Our passion, whether it's love or hate, makes us omnipotent. We're each one of us a Joan of Arc, or a Jesus Christ, or a Che Guevarra. But you must climb inside your infallible passion and die, or you'll never know'".

Staring up at the monsters. Even the black one seemed luminous.

Hurley, " 'The humans have no emotions and no zeal. But we do. It's inner-strength and inner-spirituality the way they're meant to be. Consider the polarities which _should_ define them. No one has a tangible job anymore. Everyone aspires to sit behind a desk as a neo-yuppie. In short, modern man lacks the zeal to toil as a utilitarian bluecollar, in factories, in warehouses, on worksites. At least with this pro-active drudgery, they could either practise their religion quietly or worship their beautiful, transcendental capitalism –but no, this is too much like hard work for them. And at the other end of the spectrum, they don't even want to understand the zeal of those who hijack planes and fly them into their mortal enemies. So ask yourself, what lies between these polarities of zeal? Living death. Purgatory.

" 'But things have changed now. Things have been shaken-up. We will reclaim this Earth from sea to shining sea. Believe it. _This is Our Island'_ ".

A sense of momentum pulsed in the air. Still the Smoke Monsters drifted easily at an angle. They moved diagonally and, between the sound of the new-species chirrup, the awesome wail emitted once more. They reared their worm-like tips and raced away through the various glowing sections of the Ankh Station. Boon's mind raced to understand what was happening. He stumbled backwards and was violently sick.

Out into the meadow they moved, relishing the brilliant sunlight at every twist. They danced, spiralled around each other and played like foxes. The sound of the wails, as ever, was completely inhuman, albeit with the sheer number of blasts suggesting a kind of bliss. Bliss, catharsis, intoxicating _purpose._ They surged low over the plains, causing even the shortest, silvery grass to swirl.

Jack stared and felt curiously unafraid, even taking in the relentless speed at which the monsters were coming. Love; Love the Monster; Love the self-indulgent Monster, and let's give it all the power in the world. He held Kate's hand. She let go of the kite and it gently pulled away into the sky. The Monsters circled them at speed, close enough to make their clothes billow and their skin feel cold. And then up; Black and Satin spiralled around each other and the kite. They raced upwards, pulling the tiny white canvas higher and higher until all three of them became a minuscule speck. And directly above that, the nigh-transparent moon, a ghost, a new world.

'This is the epilogue', thought Louise Sarabande darkly. 'Our lives are a drawn-out epilogue to the bleakest story ever written. The drawn-out epilogue of a drawn-out story. An epilogue to a story about drawn-out bleakness. And I ceased being able to think straight some time ago, and now I just want to die and for there to be no afterlife'.

She tried and failed to read a few more lines of Frifjof Capra, 'The Tao of Physics'. But by now, the jarring vocoder musak from a dozen seats behind was –pure torture. Psychic and philosophical torture par excellence, and go home World War Two Japanese interrogators; at least you were trying to _achieve_ something. The student lounged on his seat and stared at nothing; looking into his eyes, it was hard not to believe he wasn't _consciously_ evil, _consciously_ arrogant. But of course, it was worse than any kind of evil. It was fecklessness triumphant. It was affected thoughtlessness given the keys to the world.

The old business man swept aside his newspaper and moved to confront the boy. Louise briefly glimpsed the numerous stories about the extraordinary events which had happened in Afghanistan in the past 24 hours. None of it mattered. The Afghans have their troubles, we have ours, so try and execute a single methodical action in your life.

"I wonder if you wouldn't mind turning your music off. This is a public place", invited the business man.

The ridiculously low-voiced student gave his ingenious counter, "I have just as much right to sit and listen to my music as you have to read your newspaper".

Kane and Abel, Kane and Abel, Kane and Abel; the names flashed on and off in Louise's hysterical mind. She wondered if she was having some kind of fit. Yes, God: educate us all about how ridiculous and petty it is for Kane to hate Abel. Except, except. Here comes the wild, freakout concept, the conceptual antimatter, the wild, philosophical zeitgiest: _what if Abel, on an empirical and objective level, genuinely deserves to die?_ _And what if I still continued to give him the benefit of the doubt, on Your say-so, even as he drove me irrevocably insane?_

The old business man, defeated, sat back down and pretended to read his paper. Louise glanced along the aisle to the driver –named Tom, she dimly remembered—noting the way his eyes flicked slyly at the rear-view. He would not intervene because he enjoyed seeing the passengers squabble amongst themselves.

Her heart beat wildly with hate. She so often wondered if the hatred was in some way valuable, because it woke her up. After all, working twelve hour shifts at the factory, then taking home an entire flowbox of outwork, meant she was exhausted all of the time. At least the hatred allowed her to be awake and able to work, albeit riddled with impotent fury.

Yes, whatever. Tell yourself what you like.

She found herself opening the flowbox, sorting between ceiling rose components, removing a length of copper wire. The wages paid for outwork assembly was five dollars per 100 units. She'd always felt this was too high, and felt curiously ashamed on collecting her wage slip; it was simply delicate work, not skilled. Delicate is nothing. Once or twice on the production line, they joked that the copper wire could easily be used to strangle someone, in the style of a stealthy hit-man in a video game. Presently she thought, 'yes'. Let's hope so.

Delicate is nothing. Louise Sarabande moved quietly to the rear of the bus and casually sat down behind the student. No humility, no fear. She wrapped the wire in loops around her fists, pulled it tight until her skin bled. It was much like awaiting the starting pistol of a track race. Except the pistol did not fire. She allowed her fists to go numb, as meanwhile a horrible tingling enveloped her torso.

It was so fine; something entirely from the macro human world, nothing at all like a zipping quantum balance. She had no problem becoming a murderer, then scrambling for some form of hari kari in the police cell. But it was the thought of a kindly, softly-spoken officer visiting her dad his retirement home. He was pretty much gone in the head, but she'd noticed that his understanding was automatically attuned if he was exposed to something either very happy or very sad.

Your daughter is a murderer. She murdered someone because she was the very last bluecollar in the country, as you were in the last hundred, as your father was in the last thousand. She killed someone because she couldn't stand the disrespect a second longer.

'I need to get drunk', she thought.

The bus slowed down very gradually; that son-of-a-nightmare Tom always showed too much leniency with the yellow lights. Louise's mind drifted where it could, before a peculiar sound returned her from orbit. It was like a demon, she thought, imitating a jackdaw, trying to freak you out by making it much too slow and regular. She heard something like a colossal, anguished wail.

Through the sun roof, she observed two columns of smoke. Black, Silvery-Satin. She knew at a glance these were The Monsters she'd been waiting for since always. They moved suavely to the front of the bus, curved down and scrutinised Tom. Needing little or no room to flex itself, the Satin Smoke put-out the doors, then moved back to allow entrance for the Black.

Reference 'Jaws'. The Black Smoke surged coolly among the dozen passengers. A failed-cosmopolitan ethnic lady started to scream via too-shallow gasps of air. The creature regarded her blankly for a few seconds then moved on up the bus. By the time the Satin Smoke brought up the rear, she was already mute through zen-like hysteria, and nice work if you can get it.

In truth, Louise felt nothing as the creature approached, perhaps just mild fascination –at the piston-pulses of cloud-substance moving and receding inside their bodies. Hypnotic, easily. In a small way indicative of how they must be thinking, though not wholly related to it. Sometimes she fancied she could see impossibly deep inside, between the expulsions of smoke, detecting the miasma in which the unearthly clicking sound was formed. These thoughts, she reigned back, knowing that humans are never meant to perceive too much.

Black clung close to passengers on the right side of the bus. A few yards behind, Satin took great delight in looming above the left-side humans, ducking down unexpectedly, moving between their tiny, limp heads.

But finally, Black arrived in front of the student and unceremoniously broke his neck. The musak continued, as if to illustrate the fearful anti-climax. Satin consumed the phone and somehow deactivated it.

In the manner of a needle smoothing upwards through cloth, all very sober, the Black Smoke Monster appeared over the top of the chair and confronted her. The Satin partner halted alongside and examined her with interest.

Louise looked inside the heart of the smoke and what she saw – was beautiful.

Tears came from nowhere and rolled down her face. "Thankyou!"

The monsters took receipt of the girl's catharsis by remaining in one spot and lowering the frequency of their creeping noise. They regarded her kindly. Please stay on the line and one of our operatives will be with you as soon as possible. Please give just twenty dollars a month, and you can make the world a better place for children like Louise. A few dollars, every now and again -that's no good. And let's watch Sex and the City. And Help the Heroes; this is how you spell 'Al'Qaeda'.

The Smoke Monsters emitted the most ferocious wail yet and glided past her. Smiling, she did not look round as they surged up at the broad rear window, Satin turning quickly like an exiting bank robber toting his sawn-off. Black –making short work of heaving out the plexi-glass.

They curled themselves around the outer edge of the bus, braced themselves – and with insanely disproportionate strength, flung the vehicle twenty feet into the air. It pirouetted sharply, invoking visceral lust the human eye is surely sickened by – then down. The roof, the windows of the passenger section, the thick upholstery, all crushed like tin-foil. Hear the screeching of b-list metal; terrible - never quite as terrible as the war-cry of the Smoke Creatures. A godless silence enveloped the street.

Several yards away, John Locke and Juliet Burke became incarnate again. They calmly jay-walked along the graphite, then up on to a small grass bank. Lots of the humans made good on their heels. An equal number emerged from the bunker nightclubs, the nothing office blocks, out into the blue atmos to stare in abject wonder.

"Follow us on Twitter!", mocked Locke.

Juliet breathed deeply, though it hadn't really been physical exertion. Her cheeks were rosy, causing Locke's heart to flutter tremulously. They seated themselves casually on the grass and eyed the arriving emergency vehicles, she smiling ponderously, he laconically. Sparse little buttercups, leaves-with-no-daffodils - they pulled up the foliage and played with what they could.

"There's one thing that worries me", said Juliet. "If I suddenly became mortal again, would you still love me?"

"No", said Locke, and they smiled and rubbed their foreheads together.

She slid her arm through his. "How many times do you think we'll have to do this until they understand what we're doing?"

Locke pouted. "They'll never understand. This is all simply to sate our own anger and make us sane again. Even if a small group did begin to understand, it would make no difference. But I really don't want to analyse it, it automatically makes me sound as though I'm ranting".

"John!", she ran a cool and loving hand along the collar of his pastel T-shirt. "We became the Smoke Creatures so that we wouldn't have to rant, or weep, or get drunk ever again. Perhaps – if we encouraged them to see us vengeful gods?"

Locke smiled softly. "It would be fun for a while. But it's important that they think for themselves. And therein lies the Catch 22; if they were capable of thinking for themselves, they wouldn't be here in the first place".

He absent-mindedly played with his wrist-watch strap. On a subconscious level it had always annoyed him that he'd chosen leather over metal links, and perhaps because he felt it was what was expected of him. John Locke the simple man. John Locke the man of nature. Presently, he realised there was surely a different kind of nature. He looked at his watch and lusted after the thickest, most alienesque metal links. And not those stupid elasticated things which yuppie business men wear, either. Proper, forged links which interconnected like human bones. Those beetle-like shells you saw on years-wage Tag Heuers or secret agent Breitlings.

"We can do anything now", said Juliet.

"Yes we can", said Locke.

"Perhaps we could go back in time and fall-in with Lenin? Allow him to take over the world, make sure Yuri Gregarin is the first man on the moon? I always thought communism was a nice idea; it was only the humans that ruined it".

"Time travel is ugly", Locke smiled and leaned back slightly. "It robs a man of god's harsh definition".

Juliet lay down and placed her head in his lap. "Time travel _is_ ugly, but we could always go to Ancient Egypt for our vacation. I get the impression that people were less arrogant back then. We could build sand castles, and bring treasure for Tutankhamun".

"We could laugh at the strangulated romance of Anthony and Cleopatra", added Locke.

Juliet, "As we laugh at all human romance".

They stared out at the thin strip of red in the sky, denoting the season's most abrupt sunset. The Twilight of the Gods. Red sky at night: shepherd's delight. He glanced down at her tranquil eyes, themselves a profound contradiction in terms; tranquillity but bequeathed with war-like introspection, and make of it what you will. This is Tranquillity Base.

"Do you still want kids some day?", she asked him.

He brought faux-incredulity; " 'Kids', plural?"

She smiled profoundly.

Locke stared at the air ambulance as it came to a rest in the street below like a retro-thrusting spaceship. He regarded the converging squad cars, the way their red roof lights surged from left to right. Right to left, right to left, quite hypnotically and no doubt something to do with the most primal energies of the universe. He idly imagined a creature, perhaps a cyclops, which had such burning red eyes to hound and disconcert the humans.

From the squad cars, half a dozen officers emerged. They stared at John and Juliet, confidently fingered open their gun holsters and moved slowly up the grass bank.

"You have no idea how badly I want us to have children. But obviously nothing human. I want to gift them. I want them to see gamma rays. I want them to hear X-rays and smell dark matter, have passive-aggressive zeal where their blood should be. I want the humans to distrust them, then slowly be fooled into thinking we're all the same in some broad, liberal cliché. I want to see desperate, apocalyptic wars being fought against Bad Robots, and when the humans are inevitably brought to their collective impasse, I want them to go ahead and die".


End file.
